UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 837-xxiv
HOUSE OF COMMONS
MINUTES OF EVIDENCE
taken before the
COMMITTEE
on the
CROSSRAIL BILL
DAY TWENTY-FOUR
Tuesday 18 April 2006
Before:
Mr Alan Meale, in the Chair
Mr Brian Binley
Mr Philip Hollobone
Kelvin Hopkins
Mrs Siân C James
Sir Peter Soulsby

Links have been added to the Exhibits and to the slide presentation which accompanied the testimony.

Evidence and cross-examination of Mr Schabas

Evidence and cross-examination of Mr Winbourne

Recall evidence and cross-examination of Mr Berryman 

Summary statements

Ordered: that Counsel and Parties be called in.
6645. CHAIRMAN: Today the Committee will continue hearing the Petitions 
relating to the Residents' Society of Mayfair and then we will hear the 
case of Antique Hypermarket Limited, Dystopia Limited and the Regent 
Street Association. First of all, an apology: counsel will see that we are 
not currently working on Commons time but we are having to work on Lords 
time, which is considerably slower. Counsel, is there anything - before we 
return to Mr Pugh-Smith - you want to tell us?
6646. MS LIEVEN: Only to mention, sir, that we have been informed that 
Dystopia have withdrawn their Petition, so we shall not be hearing from 
them this afternoon.
6647. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Mr Pugh-Smith, do you want to call your second 
witness?
6648. MR PUGH-SMITH: Good afternoon, sir. My next witness is Mr Michael 
Schabas.

MR MICHAEL HUNTLY SCHABAS, Sworn
Examined by MR PUGH-SMITH
6649. MR PUGH-SMITH: Can I also confirm that you have the bundle of 
exhibits, which have been distributed on the last occasion, to hand? There 
is a thick and a thin bundle. Most of the exhibits are in slide form, 
which Mr Schabas will refer to. Mr Schabas, can I ask you to introduce 
yourself to the Committee and briefly explain your background and 
qualifications please?
(Mr Schabas) Thank you, yes. My name is Michael Schabas. I have 25 years' 
experience working in the railway business and in projects - planning, 
design and operation. I have a Masters Degree in Transport Planning from 
the Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University and I have worked 
on rail projects in the United States, Canada, Australia and Britain. I am 
a director of companies that carry passengers and freight trains in 
Britain and in Sweden and Norway, and have been in Australia as well. Some 
of my experience is particularly relevant, I think. I planned and promoted 
the Jubilee Line Extension on behalf of the Canary Wharf developers, I 
worked extensively on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link Bill and I was retained 
by the Department for Transport in 1992 to review the Crossrail scheme, 
which was actually then before the House as well. I have set out in 
exhibit 1 a full CV with further details of my experience for the 
Committee.
6650. On what basis do you appear before the Committee today?
(Mr Schabas) I am here in my own right; I am not representing any of the 
companies that I am involved in but on behalf of the residents of Mayfair 
and St James.
6651. Mr Schabas, what I would like you to do now is if you could kindly 
outline briefly the issues that you wish to talk to the Committee about.
(Mr Schabas) I think my evidence will show that the Promoters and their 
agents, Cross London Rail Links Limited, have not seriously considered 
alternatives to the safeguarded route between Paddington and Liverpool 
Street. They have considered alternatives only superficially and only in 
order to discard them. They have spent five years and more than £150 
million of taxpayers' money to promote the scheme but they have always 
been in such a hurry to get shovels into the ground that they have cut 
corners on the planning and alternatives analysis process. My experience 
on other rail projects is that if you rush the preliminaries you have to 
pay back for it later with interest. If the railway is not designed 
carefully it may not achieve the stated objectives, it will cost more than 
promised and will not attract the expected passenger volumes. Sometimes 
you have serious cost overruns; sometimes you have to make very expensive 
changes to make it work operationally and I have actually been involved in 
some situations where that has happened - several unfortunately. 
Fortunately, there are checks and balances in the system and obviously one 
of those checks and balances is that designed schemes often do not get 
funded or built - even sometimes after powers are obtained. On this point 
I have a bit of a sense of déjà vu; the last time - I think it may have 
been in this room - that I sat here as a witness was in 1994, giving 
evidence on behalf of the King's Cross Residents' Association, who are, I 
should say here in case there is any doubt, an equally respectable group 
of people as the Mayfair residents, and their neighbourhood was entirely 
blighted by the Kings Cross project that British Rail was promoting to 
build an expensive underground terminal for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link 
at a cost of about £1 billion. I suggested that instead you could come 
round the back and use the St Pancras station, which was mostly empty at 
the time. I have to say the Committee did not appear to take much notice 
of what I said - it was a Lords Committee, though, so that might explain 
some of it. British Rail, at the top level, did not take any notice but 
the Department for Transport took a great deal of interest and John 
Prideaux who was in charge of the project took a great deal of interest, 
and I worked with him inside, effectively, British Rail - Union Railways - 
I should say with people like Bernard Gambrill, over there, looking at 
alternatives and I think you know that it is St Pancras that is now being 
built as the new terminus.
6652. Mr Schabas, what I would like you to do, if you would, is explain 
briefly how, in your own words, the safeguarded route came to be 
identified.
(Mr Schabas) Sure. I go back to 1988, actually when I first came to this 
country - when I first came to live permanently, the economy was booming 
and the Government established a Central London rail study. They said 
"Find a route across London for a railway". Halcrow was given the job and 
identified in about six weeks the route that pretty much you have before 
you now, from Paddington to Liverpool Street. They were very proud of it 
because they said they had found a route from Paddington to Liverpool 
Street that avoided deep pile foundations, and being engineers that was a 
very important requirement for them. It is a very important requirement, 
but it was a quick study - they did it in six weeks and for a pretty small 
amount of money. They showed that there was one feasible route. They did 
not say that it was the best route or the only route, and I think they 
would admit that, Halcrow would agree even that engineering and missing 
deep pile foundations are not the only requirements that you should take 
into account when planning a route across London, especially one that is 
going to cost £10 billion and disrupt the City for years. It is not an 
ideal route, I have to say, and my background extends beyond deep pile 
foundations and tunnelling (although I do know a bit about that). It has 
some serious shortcomings. It has no interchange with the Victoria Line or 
the Piccadilly Line which are the two busiest tube lines across Central 
London. It has no connections to Oxford Circus station because of the way 
Oxford Circus is configured. It swings south under Hyde Park in order to 
provide for a connection on to the Marylebone Line, but there is no plan 
now to do that connection ever. It runs along past the American Embassy, 
which I guess in 1988 was not seen as a security issue the way it maybe 
should be seen now. The main reason for staying south of Oxford Street, I 
have been told by the engineers, was they did not want to conflict with 
the Post Office tube, which as you may know runs from Paddington to 
Liverpool Street as well, along the north side of Oxford Street. The Post 
Office railway is, unfortunately, closed and has been for a few years now. 
So to go south of Oxford Street under Mayfair because of a junction that 
you are not ever going to build and to miss the Post Office tube, which is 
closed, it seems you have lost two of the main reasons for doing it. Then 
not having a good interchange. If one looks at the stations and walks 
around Central London, if one walks around Tottenham Court Road or Oxford 
Circus or Bond Street, it is hard to imagine also another 100,000 
passengers being put on to the pavement, but that is what Crossrail is 
supposed to do: it is supposed to put another 100,000 people on to the 
street. If it does not put another 100,000 people on to the street, then 
it has not accomplished its objective. I think if you look at the 
passenger numbers, in fact, it does not accomplish the objective; they are 
not expecting to put 100,000 more people on the streets, they are going to 
be the same people on different trains - but that is another story. To put 
this line right through the most crowded and congested places, which are 
already so crowded, seems to me to be maybe not the right answer; that 
other factors should be thought about.
6653. Mr Schabas, how do you come to look at alternatives?
(Mr Schabas) As I said, I did the review in 1992 and that was just a 
review of the current scheme and we basically gave it a pretty lukewarm 
recommendation. I think the Committee then read our report as part of 
their deliberations and rejected the Bill. They never looked in detail at 
the alignment. At the time I had not thought much about the alignment 
either. Around late 1999 the Strategic Rail Authority, as it then was, 
asked train operators, including GB Railway, which I was part of, if we 
had any ideas how to relieve congestion at Liverpool Street, Paddington 
and Waterloo. I got out some maps and started scratching my head and 
thinking about it and said: "Well, London has changed a lot since 1988. It 
has now got Stansted in the East - a big airport - Heathrow is getting 
bigger still, Crossrail does not serve either of them really - it still 
does not - you have got Canary Wharf which did not exist in 1988 (we were 
just starting the first piles there) and now it is another city and it is 
a third major centre. So I thought, "How can you build a railway from 
Paddington via Canary Wharf and on to the east with the least problems, 
frankly, getting the powers" - whether it is using Transport and Works or 
Parliament because this and the funding are the two major problems of 
getting any railway across London built. The statutory approvals and the 
funding. I looked at the map and I thought - it was not quite this quick - 
"Actually, there is at least one other route that has been safeguarded 
through Central London, from east to west, which does not have a lot of 
deep pile foundations", and that is the river. It was not safeguarded by 
the Department for Transport, it was safeguarded by a higher authority, 
shall we say.
6654. If we could have that up. [Exhibit 2]
(Mr Schabas) There we are. Maybe I should walk through this and explain. 
It serves the West End in a different way. It does not serve Bond Street 
and Tottenham Court Road, it does not go to John Lewis; it is a bit closer 
to the Army & Navy and, frankly, a bit closer to Westminster where we are 
here. It would come down under the Royal Parks, so no foundations, there 
are a few security tunnels to worry about - remember I was involved in the 
Jubilee Line which goes under Green Park, so I have got a bit of 
experience. Interchange with other tube lines and within walking distance 
of the heart of the West End but the station itself would be under the 
river. A second station probably in front of the Tate Modern, Blackfriars 
Bridge, where you can have an excellent interchange with Thameslink. One 
of the problems with Crossrail, the safeguarded route, is the interchange 
with 'Thameslink is up at Farringdon. Anyone who has been on the 
Thameslink Farringdon platforms in the rush hour knows they are very 
narrow and constrained platforms. They cannot be widened without 
demolishing some pretty expensive buildings and they are not proposing to 
do that, so there is a real problem in the current scheme of going through 
Farringdon. At Blackfriars Station you can build a proper interchange. 
Another station at London Bridge - it is actually in front of the Mayor's 
office, in front of City Hall - and again interchanges with the tube 
lines. Yes, you can interchange with the major Tube lines, and then 
through to Canary Wharf. The whole alignment follows the river. You can do 
the construction - this is how the Tubes were built at the turn of the 
last century - from the river using barges and therefore reducing truck 
traffic through Central London. Next slide, please. That is a 
cross-sectional drawing. We commissioned Mott Macdonald who engineered 
about half the Tube network, I think, and are working on Crossrail too, 
but they were not back in 1999, so they did this for us, and they did the 
drawing. You can see the Tubes there; they are deep under the river; they 
are in the London Clay, and you would have escalators and stairs and lifts 
and so on up to either side of the river and you can actually add 
pedestrian subways through so you can get people up on to the embankments 
on either side. They wrote us a letter which I think is in your evidence, 
exhibit 3, which says they found no fatal flaws from an engineering point 
of view on the proposal. We presented this all to the SRA in January 2000.
6655. There is a summary slide to go in at this stage.
(Mr Schabas) We suggested it to them. It avoids deep pile foundations. It 
serves the City, the West End and Docklands. It provides better 
interchange with the tubes and the other railways. Stations are in much 
less congested areas; better places for these 100,000 more pedestrians to 
distribute, and the construction impacts should be less severe. The 
second-last point I will come back to and explain because it is a bit out 
of sequence. The SRA took a year to respond to us. It was a rather long 
wait for a meeting because we put quite a bit of work into it, and it was 
at their request actually, and I had a meeting first of all with Keith 
Berryman. Keith had already been appointed to do the London East/West 
Study for the Strategic Rail Authority, and he actually did a presentation 
in December 2000 about eleven months after we put forward our proposal. He 
did a presentation to London First, stating that they had already made the 
recommendations to the Secretary of State and he made no mention of 
looking at any alternative routes through Central London. I asked for a 
meeting. I said "Keith, what happened to our proposal?" "Oh, I guess it 
will be okay". So we had a meeting on 17 January and he said that they 
were not looking at alternative routes because that would add two years' 
delay and they were under strong political pressure to get something under 
way, and there really was not time to start looking at alternatives. Any 
change from the safeguarded route would delay things for two years. They 
had already then submitted the London East/West Study to the Government 
and confirmed that to me, and that was eventually released. Before that 
came out I wrote another letter back and said, "I think you are making a 
mistake. You are rushing this process and you are going to regret it 
later." [Exhibit 4]
Richard Morris, who is now Operations Director of Crossrail, wrote a 
letter [Exhibit 5] saying he had taken over running the project in the SRA and he 
wrote me this letter saying, "We examined this last year". I do not 
believe they really did; I think the word "examined" means they looked at 
it. "We are not as sanguine as you regarding the engineering difficulties, 
although these could no doubt be overcome. The main difficulty is the 
amount of interchange required would be substantially increased". 
Essentially he was saying if you put it under the river everybody has to 
walk further because nobody works on top of it, and I think that is true, 
but there is analysis there: how important is that? Everyone knows 
Waterloo Station is on the wrong side of the river but many people use it 
and we have lived with that over 150 years and there have been proposals 
to take the railway across the river and those have always been rejected 
for pretty good reasons. Mr Morris was using a planning argument now, not 
an engineering one, to say that they should take up the safeguarded route, 
and not using a political argument. They then published the London 
East-West Study Report which you can still find, I think, on the website 
somewhere. It is an interesting document because it is used in the 
Environmental Statement for Crossrail as the key foundation for their 
route selection process. Chapter 6 of the Environmental Statement refers 
to the London East-West Study as basically the study with which they 
decided where to go with Crossrail. The funny thing about it is, the 
London East-West Study's Crossrail is not very much like the one we have 
got now. They actually say in London East-West that it should not go to 
Heathrow. They do not go to Reading. They do not go to Abbey Wood. They 
have not apparently heard of the East Thames corridor. They did not go to 
Canary Wharf, so after this report was produced Canary Wharf then put on a 
lobbying effort and the Mayor, Ken Livingstone, I think pretty much said, 
"If you want me to back this it must go to Canary Wharf and it must go to 
Heathrow. You are crazy if you do not do that", and they changed it. I 
raised it before that they had not tried to address those two major 
destinations with the scheme but it kind of throws the London East-West 
Study out the window as a report as the foundation for your house. I heard 
nothing more from the Crossrail team until December 2001; every ten months 
we go through the cycle again, when I was contacted by Julian Maw. I 
worked with Julian on the Jubilee Line extension and he was now working 
for Cross-London Rail Link. He said, "We would be interested in looking at 
your scheme". I think Julian understood that in today's world you are 
supposed to look at alternatives, or at least be seen to pretend to look 
at alternatives, and he invited me in. We had a meeting with Keith 
Berryman that went on for the better part of a morning about the route 
through central London and the other ideas that we had presented as to 
what Crossrail could do, and I am not here to talk about them. Obviously, 
I would love to explain them but we are here to talk about the route 
through central London and how or why it should affect Mayfair. They 
responded. They were interested in studying this further in that they 
would study the feasibility and the business case. They even paid GB 
Railways and therefore me to work with them for about six months. I would 
not say it was a very two-way relationship. I produced a lot of papers 
saying, "If I was trying to build a railway that could get through 
Parliament and get funded these are some of the things I would do". They 
did produce alignment plans and profile drawings. If you go to the next 
one, that is one of the ones. It is a very faint drawing but you can see 
their title block in the corner, "Crossrail Line 1". That is the 
Embankment Gardens, that is Blackfriars Station, and that is showing the 
line under the river done by their engineers. You can see that those 
stations fit quite nicely between the banks of the river with entrances on 
either side which come up into what is usually open space. Some of it is 
parkland, some of it is for the front of the National Theatre; it is for 
their car park, actually. It might work a lot better to put an entrance 
there. It was feasible. The feedback from the engineers was that this was 
feasible. There were not any serious problems they could see, which is the 
same as Richard Morris had said in his letter, especially if you build 
this line, and Mr Berryman even said to me that it might be cheaper 
because as it happens along the river route you intersect the two lines. 
You do not need quite as many stations; you save one station and that is 
£300 million or £400 million.
6656. MR PUGH-SMITH: So what happened next?
(Mr Schabas) I went away on my summer holidays thinking that they were 
going to be doing computer modelling of the revenues [Exhibit 6] and so on, because 
this is how you would know whether being in the river rather than up on 
Bond Street was better or worse for traffic generation and congestion, and 
I came back and I had an invitation to meet with Norman Haste, who had 
just taken over as the Chief Executive of Crossrail. I came into the 
meeting with Mr Haste and they handed me a letter signed by Mr Berryman, 
which I think you have as exhibit 7, which frankly came as a bit of a 
shock because it was completely inconsistent with everything that had been 
said in the previous six months. First of all they said that the river 
route was not really feasible because there would be serious environmental 
problems with cofferdams. Actually, the cofferdam in front of Blackfriars 
Street was their idea. That provided a work site and a nice straight 
section of the river with a new embankment wall in front of the Tate 
Modern where the engineers said, "This is great. We can take barges there 
to take the dirt out and not cause a disruption in Spitalfields or 
anything like that", but here was Mr Berryman turning round and using it 
as an argument for not building the scheme. He also said there would be 
problems with vent shafts in or adjacent to the royal parks. I think that 
with the Crossrail scheme before you put vent shafts in the royal parks; 
there is no route through central London that does not have them. Those 
did not seem to me to be a reason to reject this. They also said that they 
were not going to bother modelling the schemes and in that meeting I think 
it was Mr Haste, and I think Mr Berryman may have been out of the room, 
said to me, "Look: I have been appointed to this job. They want me to get 
it built. I have not got the time or money to look at alternatives". 
Frankly, I was shocked to hear him saying this because he obviously had 
money and he had plenty of time too, and I knew he had plenty of time; 
this was four years ago. I followed that up with a brief letter on 4 
October, exhibit 8, seeking clarification on some points. Mr Berryman 
responded with exhibit 9. He said, "I do not wish this to be the start of 
a long correspondence on the subject", which was basically slamming the 
door in our face and not offering to provide any more information, because 
I asked questions about the statements made in the letter: how had he come 
to this conclusion, could he prove it? In 2005 under the Superlink hat, 
which I now wear sometimes, we asked them under the Freedom of Information 
Act for some of the evidence to support the claims in his letter, 
including the cost estimate. They said that the route would cost two to 
three times as much. The cost estimate which you have in exhibit 10 shows 
quite clearly that the river route from Paddington to Canary Wharf would 
be £3.6 billion, which I think is roughly the same, maybe slightly 
cheaper, than the safeguarded route.
6657. MR BINLEY: Could you heighten that so that we can see it better?
(Mr Schabas) You have the letter in the exhibits too, exhibit 7. Exhibit 7 
is the first one from Mr Berryman when he says it is too expensive, three 
times the price. It is funny that in the next letter he wrote back [exhibit 9]and 
said it was twice the price.
6658. MR PUGH-SMITH: Mr Schabas, can I stop you there? It is in the larger 
bundle, sir. Mr Schabas, can we come back to the position where you left 
off? You were told under the Freedom of Information Act that the cost 
would be about £3.6 billion.
(Mr Schabas) Yes.
6659. You were telling the Committee that it would be no more expensive 
and possibly cheaper than the safeguarded route.
(Mr Schabas) Yes, that is right, and we also made suggestions as to how 
they could serve Heathrow, how they could serve Terminal 5, which they are 
not doing, and how they could serve Stansted, but nothing came of it. I 
was in a difficult position. I was a director of GB Railways; we were a 
franchise-holder from the Strategic Rail Authority which was a part owner 
of the Cross London Rail Link scheme at the time and so I could not rock 
the boat too much and quite frankly I had to back off. I said, "It is not 
my problem but I think you should be listening because I am trying to 
help". [See also exhibit 16].
6660. In addition to the river route can we now turn to see if there are 
any other feasible alternatives shown on the line through central London?
(Mr Schabas) Sure. In 2004 I was again in a position where I could take an 
interest in this and I was one of the people who formed the group called 
Superlink with John Prideaux, who had been Chairman of the Channel Tunnel 
Rail Link project, Chris Stokes, who is Deputy Director of Network South 
East. He was the British Rail person in charge of Crossrail back in the 
1988 scheme. The three of us got together as well as some other people and 
said, "We want to see Crossrail built. How can we help?", whether it was 
to help them to help themselves, but there must be an easier way through 
London, a better way through London and something that has a better 
business case. And with respect to central London we could see that there 
were clear advantages to the river route in terms of reducing 
environmental impacts and property impacts and petitioners, but that there 
was also maybe another route that had not been looked at sensibly, because 
again they had taken something that had been done in 1988 in six weeks and 
just stuck with it. In particular, if you go to slide 18, from my 
experience of planning several railways this is a list of some of the main 
things you take into account when you are taking a route for a railway. It 
should be something you can build. Preferably you do not have to go 
through deep pile foundations, but if you had to go through one or two you 
would be willing to pay that price as the rest of the route was very good. 
You wanted, in this case, the West End, the City and Docklands to 
interchange with other underground and national and international rail 
lines. Remember, the Channel Tunnel was not open in 1988, and then it went 
to Waterloo for a while but now it is going to King's Cross. You want to 
design stations in locations where you do not make surface congestion, not 
just cars and buses but also pedestrians, and minimise the constructions 
impacts, and you have a lot of trade-offs to make between these, and you 
have £150 million, among other things, to do the kind of analysis to 
evaluate these alternatives, and the word "evaluation" is important 
because it implies - I did not study Latin but it implies some numbers, 
some modelling. We have quite sophisticated computer modelling in this 
country which allows us to analyse whether that route or this route is 
going to generate more people and save more time. If you go to the next 
slide [Exhibit 11] , there is the river route and there is the safeguarded route through 
the centre of that. The red line is another route that we came up with. We 
do not have any engineering on this. Superlink does not have the budget of 
the kind they have, but we said, "Now that the Post Office tube is closed 
there is probably no reason you could not stay on the north side of Oxford 
Street running roughly under Wimpole Street. You could then have the 
station at Cavendish Square". Cavendish Square has an underground car park 
and it is a terrible underground car park because it was built when people 
had Austin Morrises. The spaces are very small, but it is a great site to 
build a station from. It is twice the size of Hanover Square. There are no 
mature trees because they were all taken out when they built the car park, 
and it has few historic buildings. It is also on the north side of Oxford 
Street and that much closer up the Euston Road so you can get trucks up on 
to the trunk road system with less disruption and without them running 
past the American Embassy. You can also, at Cavendish Square, probably 
connect both to Bond Street and to Oxford Circus stations. As you know, at 
Oxford Circus station the Bakerloo and Victoria line platforms have their 
entrances mostly at the south end, not at the north end, and that is why 
Crossrail could not connect into the Victoria line in the current 
alignment, but if they had stayed on the north side of Oxford Street they 
could. The second thing we said was what we would really like to do is to 
connect with the national rail network because this is massively 
important. There is a billion pounds a year of passenger rail revenue that 
comes into the King's Cross, Euston and St Pancras areas, and I am sure 
many people use those trains regularly. Not only is there a billion 
pounds' worth of revenue a year but if Crossrail connected those terminals 
with Heathrow, with Stansted, with Canary Wharf and with Reading, national 
rail would benefit, probably with an increase of about £100 million a year 
in passenger revenue. That is a very big amount of money in the railway 
industry. 
6661. Of course, I had never thought of it before, John Prideaux thought 
of this, and he used to run Intercity, he was the one who brought it up to 
be without subsidy in 1990, you may recall. If Crossrail is truly to cross 
the capital and connect the UK - which I think Mr Gambrill uses in his 
slogan, and it is a great slogan but it is not true in this current scheme 
- it has to go via King's Cross, Euston and St Pancras. We do not know the 
engineering from Cavendish Square up to King's Cross, you can do anything 
for a price, it might require moving some deep pile foundation. We do know 
there is a station location safeguarded right in front of King's Cross for 
Crossrail Line 2, Chelsea-Hackney it used to be called. There is a place 
for a station. We also know one of the main reasons they want to build 
Chelsea-Hackney in Crossrail Line 2 is because there is massive 
congestion, some of the worst congestion on the tube, from King's Cross 
and Euston down to the West End. 
6662. If you swung Crossrail up there and back down again you might not 
have this problem - you would not have this problem. Given the 
difficulties in funding Crossrail Line 1 it might be a good idea to solve 
some of the problems of Crossrail Line 2 while you are at it. The line 
could then swing back down and rejoin the safeguarded route through 
Liverpool Street. It is a bit of detour but I am not sure it is no more of 
a detour than they are doing to go to Whitechapel and back into Canary 
Wharf. Why they are going to Whitechapel is a bit of a mystery for some 
people. The business case for going to Shenfield has evaporated. Chris 
Stokes, part of the Superlink team, was involved in the original selection 
of Shenfield. We have taken apart Cross London Rail Link's business case 
for it. We have done quantitative analysis with numbers we got from 
Freedom of Information and the business case does not stack up so they 
should just dropt the Shenfield branch and then you do not need to go to 
Whitechapel. The money you would save from that would ---- This might not 
be any more expensive than the safeguarded route and would certainly 
generate masses of extra revenue on the Intercity network. 
6663. The Cross London Rail Link is a London-led project and their models 
do not take account of the Intercity revenues, I think that is correct. 
They take account of commuter rail revenues but they take no account of 
generation on the national rail system and to me that is a major flaw in 
the methodology. As I said, as far as I know they have never bothered to 
model pedestrian passenger circulation. The statement that the stations in 
front of Charing Cross, Blackfriars and London Bridge are not convenient 
without any analysis to back it up is a worthless statement to me.
6664. MR PUGH-SMITH: Mr Schabas, if we have on the screen to assist you, 
the three identified alternatives - the northern route, the river route 
and safeguarded route - could you explain to the Committee the way in 
which you understand these alternatives being treated?
(Mr Schabas) We presented, as Superlink, our proposals to the Department 
for Transport in July 2004 with a lot of proposals from Superlink but also 
saying there seemed to be three routes through the centre that needed to 
be evaluated and that had not been done. Initially we had quite a cordial, 
even friendly, reception from the Department for Transport but clearly 
there was a political will to move forward regardless of the process and 
about two weeks later the so-called Montague Report was published. 
6665. I should just back up. The thing about the alternatives analysis is 
it is not rocket science. Mr Gambrill was involved in the Channel Tunnel 
Rail Link project with me and John Prideaux and we looked at hundreds of 
alternatives between Folkestone and London, including many different 
alternative locations. It took two years and it probably did cost £50 
million but we ended up with a scheme that although it did not sail 
through, it got a pretty smooth ride through Parliament and it has now 
been funded and built. I could not understand why they had skipped this 
process and I could not understand when, indeed, the civil servants, some 
of the ones involved in Crossrail were involved in the Channel Tunnel Rail 
Link. It was a surprise to me when they decided to release the Montague 
Report with a statement that the Montague Report endorsed the scheme and 
they were now going to put a Hybrid Bill in before the end of the current 
parliamentary session. 
6666. That seemed to be a very hasty way to move, also because the 
Montague Report did not exactly give a resounding endorsement of the 
project. If we go to the next slide Montague, in his report, said: 
"...while there are no pivotal problems, the aggregation of the concerns 
noted...creates significant uncertainty. Some of these concerns reflect 
the still preliminary development of the scheme, and could be expected to 
be resolved in time, but others are and will remain more enduring 
objections.... Accordingly, as matters stand, the Review cannot confirm 
the deliverability of the CLRL Business Case." This was very surprising 
because this was released at the same time that they announced, "That's 
great, let's go on and build it", because clearly he is not saying that 
you can do that, he is saying, "There's lots to figure out still, guys". 
6667. Superlink wrote to Mike Fuhr [Exhibit 13]  at the Department for Transport who was 
the person in charge of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link Bill as well, as 
Bernard knows him well, and we said there were a lot of questions in the 
Montague Report, and I have only touched on them here but there were many 
questions that his report raised about the business case, about the 
feasibility, the engineering, even down to how many trains an hour you 
could run through the middle of it. We got no response. We sent the letter 
20 October and we got no response. We did get a response from Adrian 
Montague very quickly. [Exhibit 14] He had been appointed as Chairman of CLRL by this 
point and he came back and said: "My mandate is very much to press ahead 
with this scheme...I really have no locus to consider alternatives." I 
think that is probably correct, that was probably what he was told to do. 
It does not seem to me to be the correct instrument for him in a statutory 
process affecting individuals and the future of London.
6668. We then decided to publish the Superlink proposals. We were accused 
of being too late, which was something we did not want to respond to 
directly but clearly the proposals had been fed to an uninterested Cross 
London Rail Link over the previous years. We were not too late, they were 
just refusing to listen. Finally we decided to publish them in public.
6669. In February the Government introduced the Crossrail Bill and 
published the Environmental Statement and Mr Derek Twigg stated, and it 
says in the Environmental Statement in response to a question in 
Parliament that CLRL had evaluated and rejected the Superlink proposals, 
and he used the word "evaluated". He probably thought they had evaluated 
it but we had not seen any evidence of anything that could be called 
evaluation. 
6670. Cross London Rail Link followed up in May with a report called the 
Super-Crossrail and Superlink update report, which was their attempt to 
justify their thinking - a bit late - that they put forward in the 
Environmental Statement. The update report has nothing in it that could be 
described as analysis, it is 25 pages of unsupported assertions. There are 
no numbers in it, no comparison with the Crossrail scheme, they just say, 
for instance, that it will have problems building it, as if Crossrail has 
no problems. They note that it will be difficult to have worksites on the 
river. There is no analysis in there to say whether it is easier to have a 
worksite at Hanover Square or Bethnal Green or Spitalfields than in the 
river, it is stating basically they did not like it, they had their 
scheme, they did not need another scheme and it would complicate life to 
look at another scheme. We presented a detailed word by word rebuttal, 
paragraph by paragraph, and you have that in your exhibits [Exhibit 15]  if you are 
looking for something to read. It would have been good to read it over the 
holidays. Basically paragraph by paragraph rebuttal of unsupported 
statements by them, every one of them.
6671. MR PUGH-SMITH: Mr Schabas, what are the main points that you would 
like the Committee Members to dwell upon?
(Mr Schabas) We think they have been in a great hurry and they need to 
slow down. This scheme has already cost £150 million and they are no 
closer to funding it, nobody has any idea how they are going to come up 
with £10 billion. They are causing a disruption to people's lives, to 
their homes, to businesses. They have blighted many people. They have not 
addressed the issues we have raised. London has changed enormously since 
1988 and the London East-West study is frankly a joke. They need to go 
back and comply with the law and with good planning practice, quite 
frankly. They need to go and study alternatives with taking constructive 
advice and input from people like Superlink and the Mayfair Residents. It 
is déjà vu, it is frankly a tragedy because if they had done this from 
2000 for the last six years and been open-minded instead of saying, "We do 
not have time to look at alternatives, we are going to start building in 
two years", they might now have a scheme that was funded, that was better 
value for money, that had public support, that did indeed cross the 
capital and connect the UK and maybe did not mess up Mayfair. It may well 
be the safeguarded route is the best route through Central London, I do 
not know, but they do not know either. This work will take a few months, 
it will require a few million pounds, but it is money that needs to be 
spent. A proper analysis consistent with law and good practice is required 
before we spend this kind of money. We need to know for sure. Thank you.
6672. MR PUGH-SMITH: Thank you very much, Mr Schabas.
6673. CHAIRMAN: Ms Lieven?
6674. MS LIEVEN: Sir, as I indicated last time we met, I have no questions 
for this witness. It is our view that these matters go to the principle of 
the Bill and we dealt in the information papers I referred to in opening 
and I will refer to in closing as to why we have chosen this alignment. I 
am not going to waste the Committee's time by an extended 
cross-examination about the merits of our alignment.

Examined by THE COMMITTEE
6675. MR BINLEY: I understand, Chairman, why counsel for the Promoters 
would say what they have just said, however the taxpayer has to be fully 
aware that the decisions arrived at are right and proper, that politics 
has to be seen to be done as well as be done, quite frankly. This raises 
some particular questions from me. The 18 billion, Mr Schabas, were there 
any figures at all that you were given which suggested the evaluation of 
your scheme should be twice as much as the evaluation of the route being 
proposed?
(Mr Schabas) Not at the time. They refused to give us any more numbers. He 
said three times and in the follow-up letter he said maybe only two times. 
We did get a break down in 2005 under Freedom of Information as to how 
they got 18 billion. The 18 billion we got last year. I think you have 
that in your exhibits. It is exhibit 10. It is one page and a spreadsheet. 
I should explain the 18 billion was for the entire Superlink scheme which 
includes branches at Stansted, through Terminal 5 and so on. We have also 
said that Superlink as a whole was 25 per cent more than Crossrail, we 
never said it was cheaper, but we always said that Paddington to Canary 
Wharf should be similar in price, and this, which they gave to us only in 
2005 under Freedom of Information, confirmed that. If you go down to EE 
Central Area, GB Rail Alignment ----
6676. MR BINLEY: I am getting a little lost.
(Mr Schabas) It would be nice if the pages were numbered.
6677. MR PUGH-SMITH: We are looking at exhibit 10 in the big bundle.
6678. MR BINLEY: Does it have a page number?
6679. MR PUGH-SMITH: No. If you look at exhibit ten.
6680. MR BINLEY: Exhibit 10, yes.
6681. MR PUGH-SMITH: There is a one sheet summary.
(Mr Schabas) This was all they gave us. This was their evaluation that 
they had done. The key point with the Central London alignment is EE 
Central Area, GB Rail Alignment, and if you look over to the right you see 
3,623,000, which is the same price, it is not three times as much or twice 
as much, the central area is the same price. The other parts they were 
arguing were much, much more expensive, the line to Stansted and the line 
to Heathrow, and we have argued that those numbers are wrong too. As I 
have said, we do not have an army of engineers behind us, but we have 
built the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, the Jubilee Line extension and things 
like that, so we are not completely guessing in the dark. We also thought 
the 18 billion number was wrong, and I could explain the other lines, but 
I do not think they are relevant the central London route.
6682. MR BINLEY: Can I secondly ask, on the letter dated 30 September, 
which is your Exhibit 7, from Mr Berryman where in paragraph 1 under 
"Cost", sub-paragraph 2, he says, "Although we accept that it is possible 
that the benefits and in particular fare box income may be higher than the 
reference scheme", how does that relate or does it relate in any way to 
the statement that was made on 16 February 2001 to the effect that the 
evidence relating to the catchment area would mean that the river route 
would not attract the catchment and, therefore, I assume the fares that 
the decided route will?
(Mr Schabas) They seem to be contradictory, do they not?
6683. It does seem to be contradictory to me.
(Mr Schabas) I do not think I should be explaining Mr Berryman's letters, 
but I do not think they are contradictory actually and I can maybe explain 
on his behalf what he was trying to say. 
6684. Perhaps we could at some stage have Mr Berryman and he could tell us 
what he means by it because these questions are important.
(Mr Schabas) The Superlink differs from Crossrail in two major ways. One 
way that it differs is that we are not sure that the route from Paddington 
to Canary Wharf which they have picked is the right one. We are not saying 
that the river is better or the northern route is better; we are not sure 
and we do not think they can be sure either. The second difference with 
Superlink is that we do not go to Shenfield and Maidenhead, but we go to 
Reading, we go to Milton Keynes, we go to Basingstoke, we go to places 
where frankly traffic growth is happening. These require some additional 
bits of railway to be built, not a lot, but a bit, seven or eight miles of 
tunnels, but tunnels are actually pretty cheap if you do not have stations 
in them. Those generate the extra revenue. I think what Mr Morris was 
saying back in 2000 was that under the river you would get less traffic in 
central London, and I think he may be right, he may be wrong, but the 
difference is going to be minor. There is going to be different traffic 
generation. If the route goes under Oxford Street or it goes under the 
river, it will generate traffic in different ways. What Mr Berryman is 
admitting here and agreeing with is that if you build the line up to 
Basingstoke and over to Stansted and Reading, of course you will generate 
more people and more revenue. He is saying that it will cost £18 billion 
to do it and that would bring us to Exhibit 10 where he has done some 
estimates to suggest that they did not, until they got Mr Morris involved 
and Mr Morris is not here, but until Richard Morris came in, they had 
nobody in their team who had real rail operational experience, they were 
engineers, and they added in a lot of costs which do not need to be there.
6685. Can I stay with the same letter and go to section 3 of that letter 
where Mr Berryman says, "In particular it does not relieve the most 
grossly overcrowded sections of the rail network which are on the LUL 
lines". Do you think he is specifically referring to Liverpool Street 
there in any sense?
(Mr Schabas) I think he is talking through his hat, with all due respect. 
I do not think he is qualified to say or know and, frankly, without some 
modelling, he could not really know. Superlink would relieve Liverpool 
Street very substantially because we are proposing that from Canary Wharf 
you would then swing up to Shenfield and take trains off the line into 
Liverpool Street. Half of the people who go to Liverpool Street now walk 
to work which is why Crossrail linking in Liverpool Street makes life 
worse for them because people in Romford will find themselves deep 
underground when they would rather be on the surface and walk to their 
offices. The other half are going all over the place and they do not want 
to go to Liverpool Street and Superlink relieves Liverpool Street in a 
different way.
6686. On the Liverpool Street one, I need to understand whether you had 
heard the initial arguments about Liverpool Street where it was felt that 
the additional capacity, whilst it needed some change, could in the main 
be taken by the present ticket halls and so forth. Crudely, that was the 
argument, as I saw it, and yet if this is about Liverpool Street, Mr 
Berryman is now arguing, or the argument in 2.2 is, that your scheme does 
not relieve the most grossly overcrowded sections, and that is why I am 
specifically concerned about Liverpool Street.
(Mr Schabas) I have not read all of the testimony on Liverpool Street, but 
what we did find under freedom of information was the generation of 
traffic that Crossrail will bring and what is amazing is that it was much 
less than they like to claim. Under the Department for Transport's own 
numbers, Crossrail will increase commuting into central London by 2.5 per 
cent because, frankly, it is not going to make the journey from Romford or 
Shenfield much nicer than it is now, so I think it is probably true that 
at Liverpool Street they will not have a more severe crowding problem 
because, having spent £10 billion, they will not have many more 
passengers. It is, therefore, probably right, but in a kind of way which 
to me damns the whole project and, if that is the case, what is the point?
6687. Early on in 2001 you were told that delay was not required and 
government pressure was suggesting there should be no delay and that was 
the inference of the statement you made to us.
(Mr Schabas) Absolutely.
6688. Then in October 2004 Mr Prideaux said, "I really have no locus to 
consider alternatives". 
(Mr Schabas) Mr Montague.
6689. Sorry, yes.
(Mr Schabas) Mr Prideaux is with us. 
6690. Yes, Prideaux is your man, my apologies. It is quite confusing 
stuff, is it not? He says, "I really have no locus to consider 
alternatives". I will ask later on, but do you think that is the same 
pressure, that those statements arose from the same pressure to drive this 
along and your view seems to be that that drive was so important as to 
suggest that they would not properly look at any alternatives? Is that 
what your evidence suggests?
(Mr Schabas) Yes, minister!
6691. Not quite! In fact, quite a long way off! 
(Mr Schabas) But I think that is exactly what they said.
6692. CHAIRMAN: Mr Pugh-Smith, before your witness goes, it might be 
unsatisfactory, the route which has been chosen, but actually it is the 
instructions you have been given and, in that respect, counsel is correct. 
We really cannot approve this in any way, we are not authorised to do that 
and it is not within our powers.
6693. MR PUGH-SMITH: We are not inviting you to do that.
6694. CHAIRMAN: But the discussion we have had here has been useful 
because it has informed members of the Committee perhaps why the route 
which has been chosen is so central to the instructions you have been 
given, so, in that respect, I am grateful. 
6695. MR PUGH-SMITH: I am glad it is helpful in that regard, but, as I 
mentioned in opening on 30 March, there is a more fundamental legal point 
as well to which I will return in closing and that is the requirement in 
the Environmental Statement to consider alternatives adequately and we 
have called Mr Schabas to demonstrate that, in our submission ----
6696. CHAIRMAN: It is well within your remit to challenge that.
6697. MR PUGH-SMITH: That is right.
6698. MRS JAMES: From what you are saying, the plan you have been telling 
us about with all of your rail experience appears to be one that takes in 
a wider perspective and a longer-term future for rail, because you are 
talking about the Reading end of things and with us knowing what we poor, 
long-suffering travellers to south Wales experience on a regular basis, 
that is a particular pinch-point, so would you see that on the back of 
this the problems could be addressed with the plan that you are taking?
(Mr Schabas) Yes, it has no difference which route you use through central 
London, but I think that Reading is another example that it is symptomatic 
because they were going to terminate at Maidenhead. I asked Cross London 
Rail because I have some friends in the organisation, "Why are you 
terminating at Maidenhead? Why don't you go to Reading?" They said, "We 
have to pay to resignal Reading which will cost £150 million". I said, "If 
you look on their website, Network Rail are actually planning to do that 
in 2011 anyway, so you don't have to pay for that". It was too late for 
them to realise this. Instead, if they do terminate at Maidenhead, it will 
cause real operational difficulties because they will have to run shuttle 
services as well on the diesel line. They will actually be adding more 
trains. There is no one solution to trains coming through to Reading and 
there is no simple solution, but it is symptomatic of them, as I said at 
the very beginning, being in too much of a hurry, haste makes waste, and 
they rushed ahead without thinking through all the issues.
6699. SIR PETER SOULSBY: Mr Schabas, what you have told us, as Ms Lieven 
has pointed out, does strike at the principle of the Bill and it is 
clearly beyond the remit of this Committee as given to us by the Commons, 
and I think in the circumstances it is quite right that Ms Lieven chose 
not to respond to it. Can I just, without putting words in your mouth, try 
and summarise what it is you have said to us. I think I am right in saying 
that you are saying to us that we are wasting our time, looking at a 
particular route, when in a broader sense it is probably not the best 
value for money, being based on an inadequate consideration of 
alternatives. I think perhaps you are also saying to us that it is most 
unlikely that it will ever be funded or built.
(Mr Schabas) Yes, absolutely. It is a great tragedy really. 
6700. KELVIN HOPKINS: I am quite staggered by what we have heard this 
afternoon. I had made the assumption, naïve though it may be, that all of 
this is sorted out before and that every possible mind is concentrated on 
all the alternatives and we come up with the best alternative. What you 
are suggesting is that this has not been done and this may not be the best 
alternative.
(Mr Schabas) Correct.
6701. I know a bit about railways myself and I know the Reading argument. 
Could we not even now say to Network Rail, "It is your job to sort out the 
signalling at Reading"? I know that Reading is a problem, but are you 
suggesting also that the reason why the scheme does not go to Reading is 
because of the cost of resignalling Reading?
(Mr Schabas) Reading is going to be resignalled. The reason it does not go 
to Reading is because the Cross London Rail Link team has so little 
understanding of railway operations and the national rail network that 
they did not know that it was going to be resignalled, so when they went 
to Network Rail and said, "We want to run to Reading", Network Rail, which 
is a different organisation, tried it on and said, "Okay, fine, you can 
run to Reading, but you will have to pay to resignal it and that will cost 
£150 million". "Well, then we'll stop at Maidenhead". Of course Network 
Rail was just kidding because they are going to do it anyway, but it is 
symptomatic of the whole process, that they have not understood the big 
picture and they have been in too much of a hurry, so they rushed the Bill 
in terminating at Maidenhead and they found out later that of course 
Network Rail has got to resignal Reading anyway and once you are 
resignalling it, it does not make much difference which you will be 
resignalling it for, so it is not the cost, but just their own inability 
to understand the network.
6702. If one wants to build the best scheme which is what the country 
needs, it may just be that it will cost a bit more than an alternative 
scheme which is not what the country needs. Reading is a major junction 
and a commuter town and Heathrow Airport, as it would, is linked to CTRL 
----
(Mr Schabas) Except it does not. They say it does, but it does not. It 
does in words and they hoped it would, but it never will. It is another 
thing that does not work.
6703. But Canary Wharf clearly is an international hub. All of these 
things have not been properly considered, in your view?
(Mr Schabas) That is correct. You have the same on the Shenfield branch 
where they have never addressed how trains would interact with the 
freight, with the longer-distance trains, possibly making services worse 
on both branches. There are ways to find solutions to these problems, but 
they have only belatedly become aware of them, so instead of seizing 
opportunities, they are trying to overcome mistakes they have already 
locked themselves into. There is one point on Reading which is worth 
mentioning. Crossrail, I think, still have on their website something 
called the 'outline business case' from about two and a half years ago 
which was what Montague reviewed. They had no branch to Maidenhead either 
at that point and it went to Kingston-upon-Thames, the Richmond branch, 
Kingston and Acton. Montague dropped that branch because it cost a lot of 
money and brought no extra revenue. It was a financial black hole. He 
added the Reading branch, or rather the Maidenhead branch back in in his 
study as a kind of last-minute thing and said, "Maybe you should put this 
one in instead because it makes money", and indeed running to Reading 
should make the business case better and would probably cost less money 
and require less subsidy, but that is not something that they have 
understood. They have always been in a hurry as engineers to find 
something they could build. With some of these additions, going up to 
King's Cross will pay for itself quite probably and certainly the one to 
Reading pays for itself and you get extra money. Those people pay real 
money. This is not something in the case of the United States and most of 
Europe where, when you build a railway, it loses money. In Britain, 
because it costs so much to drive, sometimes you do something that makes 
money and the Superlink argument was that it would cost 25 per cent more 
to build to go to all these places, but the subsidy net would be much, 
much less.
6704. There is a phrase that, "If one wanted to get there, one would not 
start from here", but we are where we are.
(Mr Schabas) That is true.
6705. CHAIRMAN: Would you accept that, in the same way you have said that 
people have not fully examined all the issues, you yourself are not the 
expert on revenues and it is just an opinion that you are giving today?
(Mr Schabas) No, there is no one person who is an expert, but I have 
looked at the business case and quite a lot of numbers have now been 
released from Montague's analysis of different branches.
6706. But you personally have not studied or written that up to say that 
that should apply and, therefore, it is your opinion that that could make 
a difference?
(Mr Schabas) That is correct, but the rail industry is actually quite an 
open organisation once you are inside it. We have passenger and revenue 
data from every station in the country, I have it on my laptop here, and 
we have a lot of experience. If you provide three services from Reading to 
central London, we know what that will do to revenue from Reading, like we 
know what it will do when you provide three services from Shenfield to 
Tottenham Court Road.
6707. I understand that, but the case being put by Mr Pugh-Smith is that 
all the options have not been fully examined.
(Mr Schabas) That is right.
6708. Well, I am saying that what you are here telling us is your opinion 
and you yourself have not actually done any detailed study.
(Mr Schabas) That is right, absolutely.
6709. In the same vein, you have not dismissed either that the route which 
has been chosen is the best route?
(Mr Schabas) Correct.
6710. You have given alternatives, but you have not dismissed the route 
which has been chosen?
(Mr Schabas) That is right, and I have told my friends in Mayfair that it 
may be that the right route is beside the American Embassy, but I do not 
know.
6711. MR PUGH-SMITH: Sir, I think in view of the time, I will spare you 
re-examination.

The witness withdrew
6712. MS LIEVEN: Sir, having said so determinedly that I was not going to 
call a witness and I was not going to cross-examine on this, it is still 
our clear position that these matters go to the principle of the Bill, but 
in the light of the concerns raised by certain members of the Committee 
and their obvious concern, which is not surprising given that they have 
only heard Mr Schabas' evidence, that we have not considered alternatives 
properly and this is not the best scheme, both of which we hotly contest, 
if the Committee so wishes, I am more than happy to call Mr Berryman, 
obviously after we have heard Mr Winbourne and the Mayfair residents have 
completed their case, in order to explain why, on those two key points, 
which is the degree to which we have considered alternatives and why this 
plainly is the best route in transport planning terms and that this is the 
right scheme. It does go to the principle of the Bill and it is, strictly 
speaking, irrelevant to this Committee, but I am obviously not happy on 
behalf of the Promoters that any member of the Committee should feel that 
we are promoting this Bill irresponsibly, which is very plainly not the 
case and the best person to tell you that is Mr Berryman.
6713. CHAIRMAN: That is very helpful and I think it is probably necessary 
for Mr Berryman to come and give evidence.
6714. MS LIEVEN: Certainly, sir. As you know, he is sitting behind me, so 
he does not have to come far!
6715. CHAIRMAN: Mr Pugh-Smith, do you wish to call your final witness and 
then we will call Mr Berryman?
6716. MR PUGH-SMITH: Yes, sir. My final witness is Mr Winbourne. Perhaps I 
could stress again, to save time, that why we have called Mr Winbourne is 
to explain why the issue of alternatives needs to be looked at 
holistically, given the legal requirement under the Environmental 
Assessment Directive and Regulations, but also in the context of dealing 
with the issue of compensation on which Mr Winbourne is acknowledged as an 
expert. Without further ado, if I may, I will call Mr Winbourne. 

MR NORMAN JACK WINBOURNE, sworn
Examined by MR PUGH-SMITH
6717. Mr Winbourne, could you introduce yourself to the Committee?
(Mr Winbourne) My name is Norman Jack Winbourne. I am a consultant of 
Winbourne Martin French Chartered Surveyors in the City of London. In 1977 
I took over the long-established Mayfair practice of Martin French in Bond 
Street and my office was then with Martin French in Bond Street, I stress. 
I appear today before the Committee on behalf of the Residents' Society of 
Mayfair and St James', 'the Society' from now on. Since 1991 I have 
advised the Society and its predecessor, the Residents' Association of 
Mayfair, RAM for short. However, my overall compulsory purchase and 
compensation evidence is also entirely relevant from an all-London 
viewpoint.
6718. In that regard, Mr Winbourne, for those who do not have a copy of 
your CV in front of them, you will see that from 1956 when you joined the 
LCC as a surveyor, continuing your employment with the GLC, in that time 
and since you have specialised in the selection of sites and buildings for 
public works, the making of CPOs and payments of compensation claims. You 
have also studied railway schemes and published some papers on their 
expropriation attribute, especially the largely out-of-date and 
confiscatory Victorian compensation regime. 
(Mr Winbourne) That is correct, sir, exactly 50 years this month.
6719. Just in terms of routes, because this is something Mr Berryman may 
touch upon, the Society in its previous emanation, RAM, put forward an 
alternative alignment. Were you party to those discussions?
(Mr Winbourne) Yes, I was. I do not want to go into what Mr Schabas has 
done so well this afternoon because, as far as I am concerned, he has done 
the job on that, except that he has not stressed that since 1991 one of 
the routes through central London is one which I proposed in outline, the 
Residents' Association of Mayfair route. This was one for the other side 
to evaluate. I do not have Mr Schabas' wealth of knowledge and from the 
very first I had the advice of other people who were civil engineers in 
their own right, originally Dennis Hunt and then Dr Ronald West, who was 
at one time with British Rail and was an acknowledged rail expert, and 
unhappily Dr West died suddenly about 18 months ago and left a big hole in 
our position.
6720. Could we then deal with the issue of the compensation system and 
some points you wanted to draw to the attention of the Committee please?
(Mr Winbourne) Before I do that, could I just mention the shift in the 
route which I suggested, and I do not want to go into the details because 
Mr Schabas has done that, but I did mention the shift in the route, the 
Wigmore alignment, and that, I respectfully suggest, is not outwith the 
direction of your Committee.
6721. Could we then turn to the compensation system and the points you 
want to draw to the attention of members?
(Mr Winbourne) My evidence focuses on two areas. The first is the proper 
presentation of the gross inadequacies of the compensation system for 
those affected by the Crossrail scheme, and that includes those who get 
nothing, which in turn emphasises the importance of considering any 
reasonable alternative route to the extent that it cuts down on the 
physical, environmental and financial disruption for people. The second is 
the significant and welcome improvements that can be made to many London 
tube stations which would ease pressure on key central London interchanges 
and which do not require the need for Crossrail and can be done for a 
fraction of the cost and with very little disruption and/or compensation 
arising.
6722. Mr Winbourne, because we are quite tight on time, can we just deal 
with that second point very, very briefly please and, for that purpose, 
there is a slide. You have highlighted a number of old interchanges where 
escalators and travelators could be put in ----
(Mr Winbourne) That is right.
6723. ---- as one of the ways in which congestion could be relieved at 
less cost.
(Mr Winbourne) I have identified a dozen and there are actually 11 in your 
pack because one got left out, Chairman. I reckon they would cost, though 
I am no expert on this, but probably under £50 million each, so you are 
talking in a budget, say, of £500 million which could achieve a terrific 
amount in terms of better interchanges. They may not all be perfect and it 
may be that some would be rejected, I accept that, but these are 
suggestions. What I can say is that linking up with existing stations is 
used in Paris, but they did it very badly, and I think we would do it very 
well. 
6724. Mr Winbourne, have you seen any analysis of this kind in the 
Environmental Statement at all?
(Mr Winbourne) None whatever.
6725. Let us turn to compensation please and can we just focus on the 
particular points please that you want to draw to members' attention this 
afternoon?
(Mr Winbourne) In my considered opinion, some of the alleged underlying 
property valuation assumptions, which have been put forward by some estate 
agents and economists monotonously in support of the chosen Crossrail 
alignment, are almost wholly misconceived. Normally, there can be no 
margin for much increase in the top property values along the route chosen 
through the City and the West End; they are already at the peak, the 
highest in Europe. It is often overlooked in planning circles that 
property values are the most immediate and commonly perceived yardstick of 
household and business amenity and environmental quality in any given 
area. It is also not appreciated by most people that a public compensation 
claim (for property and personal losses similar to liquidated damages) may 
be a reasonable component in the assessment of the environmental impact, 
stress and damage, all of those things always provided that every aspect 
of loss and damage is being addressed. In the case of, say, an intrusive 
trunk road project, the chance victim will claim a reasonable amount of 
money which reflects his or her officially inflicted property and other 
losses. Always provided that he or she is advised expertly, he or she may 
get a reasonable settlement. 
6726. However, the current compensation system in general and where some 
land interest is taken, and those are called 'Section 7 claims' in the 
business, is in many ways unfair and inadequate. This leads in most cases 
to people settling for less, even when they are advised. This is because 
of the arduous system of claiming which is open to improvement.
6727. The Law Commission, a highly respected body of eminent lawyers, 
exists to promote legal reform. Recently, after very widely invited 
consultation, to which I contributed, it reported on the inadequacies of 
the current compensation system generally in two voluminous, comprehensive 
and detailed reports, what you would expect from the Law Commission. 
Regrettably, so far Parliament has not found the primary legislation time 
to make the recommended and necessary changes. The Compulsory Purchase 
Association, of which I am its most senior member, is concerned at this 
delay which has detrimental effects upon the plans of compensating 
authorities as well as aggravating large numbers of ordinary people and 
claimants, large and small. Moreover, in my own opinion, many procedures 
could be improved now through limited and targeted regulatory changes, and 
I may prepare a paper on that. I should say, sir, that the Compulsory 
Purchase Association of course includes people from the official side as 
well as people like myself in private practice, so it is not one-sided in 
its view.
6728. MR PUGH-SMITH: Mr Winbourne, you have looked at the information 
paper the Promoters have provided, C2, on compensation. Have you some 
comments to make on that?
(Mr Winbourne) I have reviewed information paper CT2 contained in the 
Promoters' rebuttal document which purports to explain to lay people the 
existing system for providing compensation for expropriation. That is what 
it is and that is what it is called in other countries. All in all, the C2 
paper obfuscates the grim realities, instead of explaining them 
straightforwardly. I cannot possibly agree with the bland statement in the 
paper that "in general the Compensation Code is appropriate for 
application to the Crossrail project". It is poor enough for any surface 
railway project within its published limits of deviation, let alone 
Crossrail below ground, which is the very worst, as it is offered now.
6729. Consultations have been confined to hypothetical surface limits of 
deviation, as shown on the plans of the 'safeguarded route' since 1991. 
What are not shown on plans are much wider outer zones of subterranean 
caution, as contained in an unpublished annex. Taken together, those zones 
are up to a quarter of a mile wide under central London and likely to 
affect countless building insurance policies. I do not exaggerate, 
Chairman. At stations, that is the width we are looking at, on their own 
figures. They talk of 144 metres either side in this annex to the 
safeguarded route which is, I am sure, in the library of this House. 
6730. There is no written-down 'Compensation Code', as the rebuttal 
document suggests. The general compensation system is an arcane one based 
upon legislation well over 150 years old and a large body of complex case 
law since then. Indeed in document C2, quoted compensation cases are 
referred to in footnotes, but without recent update. Under Victorian 
rules, as re-enacted in the Compulsory Purchase Act 1965, so that is 40 
years old, there is an unfair disparity in treatment even for general, 
non-railway compensation, as between ordinary compensation for a road, a 
housing scheme, what-have-you, but not a railway scheme, as between those 
whose land is being compulsorily purchased where they take your property, 
Section 7 claims, and certain others where no land interest is taken from 
them, Section 10 claims, but I have sat in this room and heard the CBI 
worrying about this, and I just refer to that in passing. Sir Digby Jones 
was quite eloquent, I listened to what he had to say and I agreed with 
every word.
6731. Where any land interest whatsoever is taken from the claimant, 
fuller compensation is payable, not only for the value of the interest in 
land as such, but also for contingent claims, such as for consequential 
business or residential disturbance, the cost of moving or whatever, and 
sometimes for collateral losses incurred at other properties of the 
claimant, and in the trade that is called 'lands held with', where you 
might have a house here and your garage is affected or the other way 
around. 
6732. However, during public works where no land interest is taken from 
the claimant, compensation is restricted in scope to provable injurious 
affection, effectively limited to otherwise actionable nuisances arising 
from the actual construction of the public works, and those are Section 10 
claims. Furthermore, Section 10 confines any compensation to reductions of 
property values. In other words, you will get whatever it costs in the 
lowering of your property value, but you will not get anything else, no 
consequential losses. It cuts out any claims for residential or business 
disturbance as "parasitic", and that is in the judgment of Lord Hoffman in 
Wildtree Hotels v Harrow, House of Lords 2001, which is in the footnotes 
of C2 and it is the leading case on this matter and, as you will 
appreciate, it is recent. He quotes all the Victorian railway cases as 
precedent in connection with that particular hotel which was to do with a 
road next door to it, but precedents are all railway precedents and this 
is quite important. The doctrine was confirmed and slightly extended by 
the President of the Lands Tribunal and upheld by Lord Justice Carnwath 
and the other judges in Ocean Leisure v Westminster City Council, Court of 
Appeal 2005, where my firm advised the successful claimant, and that was 
my son James Winbourne whom you saw on a previous Petition. 
6733. After a scheme is completed, such as an airport, road or railway, 
claims for noise and other nuisances from its later use may lie under Part 
1 of the Land Compensation Act 1973. If part only of a property is taken, 
the ordinary surface claimant may opt for 'material detriment' protection. 
Suppose they are widening the road and taking your front garden, you can 
claim that they should take the entire house. You can do that by notifying 
in advance and demanding that the acquiring authority should take the 
whole property with all attendant claim items, which comes under Section 
8. Unfortunately, where subsoil is to be taken, ie for Crossrail, the 
claimant may not be alert enough to notify in advance, and that is the 
position I have in a current sewerage case in Hull. Meanwhile and 
singularly for rail tunnelling and other rail works in subsoil, material 
detriment cases are ruled out and, in particular, so are contingent 
business and residential disturbance claims, as being parasitic.
6734. MR PUGH-SMITH: Can we turn specifically to the way in which the 
compensation system applies to underground railways?
(Mr Winbourne) As to underground railways, the compensation system has 
always been more restrictive and oppressive. With tunnelling and for 
stations, subterranean engineering and manual mining work, and stations 
are all dug out by hand by the way, compensation for structural 
settlements, et cetera, is payable only for consequential building 
repairs, and that is all you get, of provable building damage, and I 
stress 'provable', but nothing more. It resembles repairs payments for 
coal mining subsidence, and I have written an article on this called 
'Blight in the Tunnel' in 2002 and I have some copies here if anyone wants 
them. That incidentally includes a satellite image of the lowering of the 
land level all over London caused by the Jubilee Line extension which was 
widely published, and Crossrail is four times as big. For example, even if 
tunnelling causes differential settlements and the walls to crack or there 
is serious noise and vibration and people and firms have to cease 
operations for long periods or even permanently, and there is a recording 
studio which I will come to later, they are not reimbursed a penny beyond 
the cost of building repairs related directly to the scheme. Non-rail 
compulsory purchase schemes do not benefit from these additional 
privileged financial advantages over direct claims. These privileges are 
allocated only to railways in the UK and only under Victorian-based 
adopted general Acts. The Crossrail Bill does not have to adopt them. 
6735. Other European countries are not so restrictive in their 
expropriation codes. I understand from two reinsurance underwriters, one 
of whom is a relative of my wife, and our client that for previous schemes 
of major rail tunnelling in Europe, compensation was made available for 
full consequential loss, including disturbance, from the construction of 
both the Rome and Barcelona metro systems, and there will be others, I 
feel sure. As to structural settlements, dust and muck, noise and 
vibration, I am deeply concerned to see repeated Crossrail evidence that 
"all was always well for the JLE" and, therefore, Crossrail too will be 
all right. The Crossrail evidence skates over the far more severe 
environmental and physical impacts of the much bigger overall size of 
Crossrail engineering - a full-size railway the same as the Channel Tunnel 
Rail Link. The outline stations (?) in sprayed concrete caverns will be 
four times as big as the JLE and likewise the several almost unmentioned 
emergency intervention points (or EIPs) on Crossrail's evidence they 
simply call them shafts but they are stations. The twin Crossrail tunnels 
will have bore-faced areas of some 50 square metres each, compared to only 
some - I have got 20 square metres but I think it is a little more; it is 
in the 20s anyway. The tunnelling shot ways themselves and the 
consequential damage will increase exponentially; it is not just twice or 
two-and-a-half times because it is two-and-a-half times in diameter. Well 
beyond any crude 2.5:1 ratio. However, what is worse is the playing down 
(I have only seen it once or twice in the evidence I have been able to 
look at that has gone before) of prolonged cases of essential but 
disruptive compensation grouting for up to 18 months each. We have had 
evidence on compensation with Professor Meyer, with illustrations which I 
have seen, and it refers somewhere, I think, to 18 months of grouting. It 
did not say it for the JLE but it happened in a lot of other places too, 
one of which I have been concerned with directly and heard the result 
personally. Finally, that there are no serious structural settlements or 
attendant vibration problems arose from the JLE; as to the absence of any 
recording studios, I have read the Petition of Mercury Theatres, thereby 
overlooking the Stock cases which I was called in to review.
6736. The Stock cases?
(Mr Winbourne) The Stock cases. We are well aware of cases from the 
construction of the Jubilee Line Extension. I am sorry. There were largely 
uncompensated heavy damage claims from Mike Stock (that is Mr Stock of 
Stock Aitken and Waterman, the well-known composer of the 1980s) of Mike 
Stock Recording Studios which is at 100 Union Street Southwark SE1. I 
would mention the building is still standing - and I bet you can still 
hear it - adjoining the large Jubilee Line Extension Wardens Grove 
emergency intervention point. Right next door the ghost station. So far as 
I know, that is the only EIP in London but it is only a quarter of the 
size of any Crossrail EIPs. It could be inspected, nevertheless I mention 
it.
6737. Mr Winbourne, can we turn to the solution to these concerns in terms 
of what the Committee can recommend?
(Mr Winbourne) The ideal solution would be for Parliament to find the 
legislative time to implement the recommendations of the Law Commission, 
which has recognised the need for reform, to ensure that appropriate 
compensation can be paid in all foreseeable cases. I recognise that this 
is unlikely to happen in time to benefit those who suffer from the 
Crossrail construction, but it does emphasise the importance of, firstly, 
considering alternative routes (as Mr Schabas said) which will not affect 
adversely as many people during the construction process or permanently 
thereafter. Attention should be paid to everyone who suffers, including 
those cut out of claiming. This is my standpoint, as a compensation 
surveyor. The route should take this into account very much so. I do not 
believe they have even considered it. Secondly, to look for the lowest 
overall costs; both in terms of engineering and compensation payable to 
those adversely affected, whilst at the same time also considering the 
interests of those ordinary people who are unable to make a claim at all - 
whether they are high or low in the social and financial scale. This is 
not only to save public and private money but also to make for the least 
environmental impact levels. Thirdly, it is important that those who need 
to claim compensation have a single clear-cut and compulsorily identified 
legal entity (this is most important), preferably the Promoter itself, 
against which to make all claims and obtain direct payment. The carefully 
worded Crossrail responses would avoid such direct "lead" responsibility. 
I have read the evidence being put to other Petitions and I am horrified 
to see that they are trying to pass the buck down the line. Unlike the 
acquiring and compensating authority in any ordinary CPO, Crossrail 
appears to be trying to pass the buck down the construction chain. I am 
well aware of cases, from the construction of the Jubilee Line Extension 
(JLE), where the lack of, or breaking down of, any single identifiable 
entity, against which to enforce claims, caused significant hardship to 
claimants. This arose from my careful dealing with all the work on the 
Stock case and I only came on it later but I have a pile of papers this 
high in my office in relation to the case which was partly settled and may 
still be outstanding.
6738. MR PUGH-SMITH: Thank you very much, Mr Winbourne. That is all I need 
to ask you.
Cross-examined by MS LIEVEN
6739. MS LIEVEN: Just one point, sir, that I want to clarify, just so we 
can respond and understand Mr Winbourne's case. So far as your last point 
is concerned, Mr Winbourne, and compensation, compensation is payable 
under the Bill by the Secretary of State. Is it not?
(Mr Winbourne) What I am saying is that the way I read - and I might have 
it wrong, Mr Chairman, but I do not think so - the responses of Mr Colin 
Smith in evidence previously, he refers, when dealing with some of the 
people at Shenfield but it does not matter whether it is Shenfield or 
anywhere else, that they would look at it in the same way as if it were an 
ordinary developer - which is wrong - which is at variance with the 
decision in Ocean Leisure, which is left out of your C2 paper. Secondly, 
he indicates (I cannot remember the words but I have got it here) 
something to the effect that it implies the contractor will deal with it. 
I think that is all wrong. What you must have is a decent compensation 
set-up, whether it is for Crossrail or anywhere else, where the authority 
pays. If they have to sue the contractor or sue the architect or sue the 
engineer, that is their problem. They are the paymaster and it should not 
have to pass down the line from the contractors to sub-contractors, to the 
professional advisers and, behind them, their indemnity people and, behind 
them, a bunch of other lawyers. That is the team that turned up, as far as 
I can see from the papers in my office, to deal with Mr Stock.
6740. MS LIEVEN: Thank you, sir. I can deal with that in my closing.
6741. CHAIRMAN: Mr Pugh-Smith, do you want to re-examine?
6742. MR PUGH-SMITH: No, thank you, sir.
6743. CHAIRMAN: Mr Winbourne, thank you very much. Before you leave, I 
want to thank you because we have had previous evidence and I think that 
gives a balanced view when we come to the time to have a look at your 
Petition.
(Mr Winbourne) I should say, sir, that I have done a précis of my answers 
to C2, if the Committee is minded to have it. Counsel has got it but I do 
not want to take up any more time today.
6744. CHAIRMAN: That would be helpful. Thank you very much.

The witness withdrew

6745. MR PUGH-SMITH: That is my evidence.
6746. MS LIEVEN: I will directly call Mr Berryman.

MR KEITH BERRYMAN, recalled
Examined by MS LIEVEN

6747. CHAIRMAN: Before you start, Ms Lieven, we have managed to negotiate 
an extension to the Committee today to five o'clock, if necessary. The 
stenographers are here and willing to work on yet again, but that is not 
to say we cannot finish before five o'clock.
6748. MS LIEVEN: We will do our best. Mr Berryman, the Committee has just 
heard the evidence of Mr Schabas. Can you explain to the Committee, first 
of all, what consideration of alternative routes there was in the 
development of this scheme as a generality, and then turn to the two 
specific alternatives which Mr Schabas gave evidence on: that is the river 
route and the northern alignment?
(Mr Berryman) During the development of the scheme after Cross London Rail 
Links Limited was set up the first thing we did was to re-examine the work 
that had been done previously in the 1980s on possible alignments and 
which we also briefly covered during the new East-West London Study. We 
identified a number of factors which I think merited an explanation. First 
of all, the fact that an alignment had been safeguarded since the 1980s 
meant that no new buildings had been constructed on that alignment during 
that period. Moreover, some of the sites which had been reserved as 
stations had been identified as sites of surface interest, so no 
development at all had taken place on those sites during that period. The 
conclusion of the LEWS study was that there should be a period of project 
definition - that is actually deciding in detailed terms what the route 
should be across London. The conclusion was that a line similar to 
Crossrail should be built but it did not go into very specific details. 
Having said that, the Crossrail alignment was used for comparison purposes 
from the beginning. The two alignments which we looked at it in detail in 
the early 2000s are shown on this plan. Line C is the river route, which 
Mr Schabas has explained and I will come back to in a minute; Line B was 
an alignment proposed by the residents association of Mayfair but is 
actually somewhat different from the alignment which Mr Schabas put up, 
although some of the points are common to both. Clearly, when we were 
given these potential alignments to look at it was not in a much more 
developed form than you see in front of you - in other words, a very long 
way away from being something which could be appraised properly. So the 
first thing we had to do was to design these alignments in detail, and we 
did that using consultant engineers - Mott Macdonald - which Mr Schabas is 
familiar with as well. We had two firms involved, Mott Macdonald and 
another firm called Parsons (?) which is a very respected engineering 
consultancy. We spent about four or five months looking at each of these 
routes and spent on consultants over a quarter of a million on each route, 
and my own staff time (I do not mean me personally, I mean people who work 
for me) probably another quarter of a million on each route. So there have 
been substantial pieces of work done to evaluate if they could be built. 
The river route is clear of buildings, obviously. It is not clear of 
bridges - there are a number of obstructions in the way which are rather 
more intrusive than you might expect - and there are also a number of 
existing underground tunnels which cross the river, so we have to look 
below in order to find a suitable alignment. The difficulties with the 
river route, from a construction perspective, really depend on the 
stations and the intervention shafts which are required. As you have heard 
in evidence already, we need to provide interventions shafts for the fire 
brigade at one kilometre centres (?) and if you are under the river it is 
quite difficult to provide an easy, accessible direct entrance into the 
tunnels. It is possible but it is not easy and it closes the centres of 
the shafts that you have to put in because you have to allow the distance 
for the firemen to get from the surface to the tunnel before they can 
start going along the tunnel. It means you have to put the shafts a bit 
closer together. Having said that, the cost of the river route would 
probably not be very much different from the cost of the route that we 
have chosen. In fact, it might be cheaper because there are fewer 
stations. But if you carry that argument to its logical extreme, the 
cheapest line of all would have no stations. The stations are essential 
for people to get on and off the trains. The problem with the river route 
in terms of passenger numbers is that the corridor on which you will be 
relying for your walk-on passengers, which is perhaps half a kilometre 
wide, or half a kilometre on each side of the station, half of that space 
is taken up by the river because there are obviously no buildings, and the 
buildings to the north of the river back on to the river rather than 
facing it. So there are issues there around how people will be distributed 
from the stations. The other site that was suggested was in Park Lane for 
a possible station with access to the West End. Park Lane is very 
non-central to the West End and all the space on one side of the station 
would be park, Hyde Park, and so there would be no walk-on catchment from 
that side of that station. The walk-on catchment from all stations on this 
proposed route would be very significantly reduced from that which has 
been adopted. On the northern alignment, as I say, the alignment we 
examined was slightly different from the one Mr Schabas put up on the 
board. We examined walk-through to Baker Street rather than coming down 
further south towards Bond Street. We found that that alignment first of 
all was no simpler to construct. In fact, I think there were environmental 
problems, but performed very much less well in terms of passenger numbers 
simply because the areas that people are really wanting to get to are in 
that Oxford Street, Tottenham Court Road, Bond Street area. There are many 
destinations for leisure as well as for employment in that area which 
people need to get to. We came to the conclusion that the route selected 
in the early nineties was still probably the most appropriate route of the 
ones that we had examined. We had a look around for variations on these 
routes. You very quickly get into problems with tall buildings which have 
deep foundations, particularly in the City area. The way that we have got 
over that to get to the City is from Liverpool Street to Farringdon we 
propose to go underneath the existing railway line and the corridor is 
already occupied by Thameslink and the Metropolitan line. What the 
northern route does is follow that alignment round all the way up to 
King's Cross. It is difficult to find another route which would be able to 
do that so easily. It is not impossible, but it takes people away from the 
areas where the biggest walk-on catchments exist and it is really walk-on 
catchment we are looking at for the stations there. The alignment 
proposed, alignment B on there, brought further south to Cavendish Square, 
which Mr Schabas proposed, was a late entry, you might say. We had in this 
case, I have to say, a fairly brief examination of it and decided that we 
could not really see what the advantages were in terms of getting people 
to their places of work and entertainment and therefore we did not take it 
any further.
6749. CHAIRMAN: What you are saying is that there has been examination of 
a number of different options?
(Mr Berryman) Oh yes.
6750. Which is contrary to what we heard a little earlier.
(Mr Berryman) Yes. I can tell you that there has been a lot of examination 
of options.
6751. What about the particular route? There is some cross-matching of 
what is here and what was in the new proposal. Clearly, you have had a 
look at those also, but it was largely on the evidence which we have 
previously taken that you stick with the route which was agreed? Is that a 
fair summary?
(Mr Berryman) That is a reasonably fair summary, yes. There are always 
local variations that are possible but you need also to bear in mind that 
some of the sites on the route have been reserved for occupation for 
Crossrail for a number of years. The landowners are well aware of those 
sites. It would be quite difficult to come at a late stage and say, "We 
were going to take that building out but we are going to take this 
building out instead", particularly if the developer had based his plans 
on what we had originally proposed, and, of course, what we had originally 
proposed was covered by the safeguarding direction.
6752. MS LIEVEN: Going back to the generality of the appraisal, Mr 
Berryman, were the alternatives appraised in a manner consistent with the 
appraisal of the Crossrail preferred route?
(Mr Berryman) Yes, they were. They used the approach to appraisal, the 
name of which escapes me but which has been used for all alternatives 
considered in the scheme. I have to say that we are only talking about the 
central section. Many different alternatives were considered for the outer 
sections of the railway but it is considerably different from that which 
was brought forward in 1992.
6753. Can we just stay with the two central section alternatives for the 
moment and I will come to one question about the other alternatives? So 
far as the river route is concerned, were there any particular engineering 
problems with constructing stations in the river?
(Mr Berryman) Yes. There are two or three particular issues that it is 
worth bearing in mind. It is true that if you go deep below the river the 
clay or ground is just as competent as it is on either side of the river, 
but there are obviously special problems in making shafts and things like 
that in a river which do not occur when you are on dry land, and in 
particular constructing stations, the entrances to the stations and the 
ventilation structures would require significant cofferdams to be in the 
river. Cofferdams in the river are not impossible if you remember the 
Millennium Bridge which was constructed recently. The foundations of that 
were in cofferdams, but the size of cofferdams that we would need for the 
kinds of structures we are talking about here would be very substantial. 
We took it as far as having discussions with the appropriate authority, 
which I think is the Environment Agency, although one of my staff had them 
and he unfortunately is not here today. The Environment Agency were not 
terribly supportive of this proposal, in particular the possibility of 
building cofferdams under the river. In fact, when I say they were not 
particularly supportive, they were quite strongly opposed to it.
6754. So far as the transport case for the river option is concerned, what 
would the river option do first of all in terms of reducing overcrowding 
on the Central line, and secondly in terms of the Northern line?
(Mr Berryman) First of all, it does not reduce congestion on the Central 
line for obvious reasons. It is going to a different place. The other 
thing it did was increase the amount of traffic on the north-south links. 
People's ultimate destinations are generally further north than the river 
and to get from the river line to their ultimate destination they would 
have to use a north-south Underground link.
6755. Turning then to the northern alignment, in terms of the transport 
benefits, what was the balance of advantage between that and the preferred 
route in terms of passengers and overcrowding relief?
(Mr Berryman) Here again, of course, it does not go to the areas where the 
biggest demand lies. It goes around the Intercity stations, that is true, 
but there already is an existing line from the Euston/King's Cross area to 
the Barbican, the Metropolitan line, which is a relatively uncrowded 
section of the Underground. For anyone who uses it, I am using the word 
"relatively". It is nowhere near the same level of congestion as one gets 
on the Central line between, say, Stratford and Liverpool Street.
6756. One of the complaints that the Residents' Association have made 
about our route is the lack of interchange with the Victoria line. What 
does the northern alignment do to passenger flows on the Victoria line 
between King's Cross and Oxford Circus?
(Mr Berryman) On this alignment that we examined at the time when we were 
doing this comparison it would make it very much worse and the Victoria 
line is already extremely crowded. I have the unfortunate pleasure of 
using it every day. It is not a pleasant experience. The suggestion Mr 
Schabas made later of an alignment that came further south towards Bond 
Street, towards Cavendish Square, may to some extent ameliorate that and 
that would be a slight improvement on option B that we looked at but not 
in terms of tipping the balance.
6757. Staying on overcrowding relief, a particular point was made by Mr 
Schabas in relation to the letter that you wrote to him on 30 September 
2002. The letter is exhibit 7 of his exhibits, and a particular point was 
raised about what you meant in paragraph three. Perhaps you would explain 
that.
(Mr Berryman) When we were looking at what Crossrail should do we were 
looking at the relief of overcrowding. Most rail services into and through 
London are, of course, overcrowded, so it is a question of degree. The 
central line, particularly between Stratford and Liverpool Street, is one 
of the most overcrowded sections of the rail network if one considers the 
Underground and the surface rail as a whole network rather than 
considering them individually.
6758. Finally, Mr Berryman, exhibit 10 in that bundle sets out some 
comparative costs. This is for a much wider scheme that was described as 
SuperCrossrail. The central section is the same as we are proposing but it 
has a lot more arms to the octopus, if I can put it like that. Could you 
just explain briefly what the problem is as you see it with having a 
scheme that serves this number of outer locations?
(Mr Berryman) There are two significant problems. The first is the cost. I 
think it would be fair comment to say that a scheme like this with longer 
tentacles may bring in more revenue but not enough to compensate for the 
very much increased costs. The problem with this project is really the 
affordability. It is a very expensive project, however you look at it, and 
making it more expensive would make it less likely to be built. The second 
point is really an operational problem which is the fact that you have 
lots of trains in the central area going to a diverse range of other 
destinations. If you have, say, four or five destination points at remote 
ends of the line, that means that only every fourth or fifth train can go 
to that remote end. In turn that means that passengers for that fourth or 
fifth train are standing on the platform waiting for their next train and 
platforms in deep Underground stations would become overcrowded and that 
is a dangerous situation. I can cite you a very good example at Victoria 
Station, which I am sure members of the Committee will be familiar with. 
The District line goes to four destinations, some trains for the Circle 
line, some trains go to Wimbledon, some go to Richmond and some go to 
Ealing Broadway, and you get very heavy crowding on the platforms there 
simply because people are waiting for the train which goes to their 
destination. Many destinations from deep level Underground stations are 
not a good idea. There is another issue in that the trains coming from 
those distant destinations, in order to get the high throughput of trains 
that we need through central London to make this scheme viable, have to 
present very accurately at the tunnel mouth. We only have a 30 or 40 
second window within which the train needs to present and that is quite 
difficult even when we have got an almost self-contained system, but when 
you have trains coming from Cambridge and Ipswich and places like that, to 
get them to present on time to allow those high levels of throughput 
through the central area is something that has not been achieved anywhere 
yet, as far as we have been able to establish, in the world, and we have 
done a fairly comprehensive search to see if anybody can do that.
6759. MS LIEVEN: Finally, sir, to explain our position, a good deal was 
said by Mr Schabas about Reading, although it is difficult to see quite 
what that has to do with the Residents' Association of Mayfair. Obviously, 
there will be Petitioners later in the process when we will be coming to 
deal specifically with Reading, and I would suggest that it is both fair 
and sensible to reserve the response on the Reading issues until the 
people specifically interested in Reading are here.
6760. CHAIRMAN: I can assure you that that is how we see the case.
6761. MS LIEVEN: We do not accept what Mr Schabas has said but I am not 
going to ask Mr Berryman to deal with it now if that is acceptable to the 
Committee.
6762. MR PUGH-SMITH: This is where we try and achieve a contortionist act 
in getting you to answer questions either put to the back of your neck or 
you turn round to me with your back to the Committee, but if you manage 
the logistics I will be grateful. You are familiar, are you, with the 
environmental assessment process? 
(Mr Berryman) I am, yes. 
6763. Since when have you been familiar with it, Mr Berryman?
(Mr Berryman) I could not tell you the date. It is something which has 
grown gradually throughout my career. When I started work in the 1970s 
environmental assessment was almost non-existent. 
6764. The process which now operates under the Directive as transposed in 
the 1999 Regulations; are you familiar with that process? 
(Mr Berryman) Yes, I am. 
6765. So you are familiar with the need to ensure that members of the 
public as well as the decision-maker (in this case Parliament) are 
sufficiently informed about decisions that have gone to the formulation of 
the project?
(Mr Berryman) Yes. 
6766. Yes. Have you got Section 6 of the Environmental Statement to hand?
(Mr Berryman) I do not have it to hand, I am afraid, no. 
6767. Can I ask you this: does that constitute what has been published to 
the decision-making body and to the general public in terms of your 
organisation's consideration of route development and alternatives? 
(Mr Berryman) The Environmental Statement generally covers those issues, 
yes. 
6768. Is it what has been published, Mr Berryman, was the question I put 
to you? 
(Mr Berryman) Yes. 
6769. Yes. So where in that document (because I have flicked through it) 
is there any reference to this NATA assessment carried out on these 
various alternatives. 
(Mr Berryman) I do not have the document in front of me unfortunately. 
Certainly in the generality there are statements made that the NATA method 
has been used. 
6770. CHAIRMAN: Have we got that?
6771. MS LIEVEN: I have got it, sir, and perhaps it might be sensible to 
give it to Mr Berryman as he is being asked about it. 
6772. MR PUGH-SMITH: Break your position, Mr Berryman. Help me please, 
where in Chapter 6 do I find this NATA comparative assessment that you 
have told the Committee this afternoon you have undertaken with regard to 
these various alternatives? 
(Mr Berryman) It is not set out in that format here. This is a summary of 
the results. 
6773. Where would I get that document? It is not referred to in any 
reference or appendices? 
(Mr Berryman) I cannot tell you offhand. 
6774. No, well, that would suggest to me that it was not in the public 
domain and not accessible.
(Mr Berryman) I cannot answer that question offhand. I would have to check 
up on that. 
6775. That might be rather important in view of the consequences that 
follow when information is not disclosed to the public. As far as 
alternatives are concerned, am I right in assuming that the Promoters of 
this project have simply responded to suggestions put forward by others as 
to alternatives? Would that be right?
(Mr Berryman) As far as the central section is concerned, no, that is not 
correct. 
6776. I see.
(Mr Berryman) We have also looked at another alignment which has not been 
mentioned here which was one which was proposed for the original Jubilee 
Line Extension before it was moved. Outside the central area we have 
looked at probably two or three dozen alternatives. 
6777. But my understanding is that the way in which this document is 
structured is that those which are the alternatives that you have 
considered are those which are there set out. Is that right?
(Mr Berryman) Certainly these are the ones we have considered in most 
detail, yes. 
6778. Yes, well, in terms of the decision-maker again and the general 
public where is the comparator assessment of these various alternatives 
other than in the form we have here which is three pages of text at most 
and a plan? 
(Mr Berryman) I would have to check whether it is in the back-up papers. I 
am sure you are aware that the total Environmental Statement is a huge 
document. 
6779. Indeed so. 
(Mr Berryman) I do not have it all to my fingertips. 
6780. And that is the reason why a non-technical summary is also provided 
to ensure that those who are less familiar with wading through voluminous 
appendices know where to look for the information?
(Mr Berryman) Yes, that is so. 
6781. And the only two alternatives that are identified are those which 
you have shown, and that is the original northern alignment promoted by 
the Residents' Association and the river route, the Superlink? 
(Mr Berryman) Yes, that is correct. Yes, those are the ones which we took 
forward in most detail. There is an issue here about how one does analyse 
alternatives. If you can see quickly that an alternative is not going 
anywhere you do not take it to the final degree of analysis. It does not 
make economic sense to do that. 
6782. That may be the case, Mr Berryman, but as Mr Schabas told us when he 
was involved with Channel Tunnel Rail Link, they looked at numerous 
alternatives including minor alternatives to see whether the best route 
could actually be put forward. 
(Mr Berryman) That is true. 
6783. And that is an exercise that you have not done, is it not, Mr 
Berryman?
(Mr Berryman) No, that is not the case. We have looked at a very large 
number of alternative alignments. It happens that in the central section 
there is a limit to how many alternatives one can look at because the 
physicality of London means there are only a limited number of 
alternatives. 
6784. Have you looked at the Wigmore alignment which takes in Cavendish 
Square as part of your consideration?
(Mr Berryman) We have not looked at that in the same detail as we looked 
at the other two, certainly. 
6785. That suggests that you have not considered the alternatives 
adequately, does it not? 
(Mr Berryman) Well, not to me, no, because the features of that alignment 
are substantially the same as the Baker Street alignment. It is probably 
slightly better in that it relieves the Victoria Line a little bit but not 
really significantly so. 
6786. The Wigmore alignment/the Wigmore shift, as Mr Wimbourne suggested 
this afternoon, would utilise Cavendish Square as a station?
(Mr Berryman) It would, yes. 
6787. And where do I find in Chapter 6 any reference to Cavendish Square 
in that section as part of your consideration of alternatives?
(Mr Berryman) You would not find it there, no. It is not there. 
6788. Or whether or not Cavendish Square would be a more suitable place 
for a work site than Hanover Square, for example, again another 
comparative exercise. We do not find it, do we, Mr Berryman?
(Mr Berryman) No analysis has been done of Cavendish Square. A superficial 
analysis would indicate there would not be very much difference but 
certainly no analysis has been done.
6789. No. Bearing in mind the environmental impacts that will take place 
finding the least worst option can be significant, can it not?
(Mr Berryman) Indeed it can, that is what it is all about. 
6790. In terms of whether or not a scheme is going to have a heavier 
compensation bill to have to fund or not, for example?
(Mr Berryman) Yes, but whichever option you take, if you take the 
Cavendish Square option you will still be affecting the same number of 
landowners albeit different ones than in the Mayfair option. 
6791. How do you know that, Mr Berryman?
(Mr Berryman) Simply by looking at a plan of London. 
6792. With the greatest respect, you just told the Committee a few minutes 
ago that you have not actually looked into Cavendish Square so how can you 
express an informed view?
(Mr Berryman) You can express an informed view simply by looking at an 
A-Z. You do not need to take it any further than that. 
6793. Not even a land ownership map the investigation of land registry 
titles, and things like that?
(Mr Berryman) Generally speaking, the distribution of the different kinds 
of property across the area immediately to the north of Oxford Street and 
immediately to the south of Oxford Street is not much different. 
6794. I see. Of course, one of the benefits also of having an alignment 
north of Oxford Street is there are commercial opportunities, are there 
not, as well? You can link in other shops as they have done at Bond 
Street. Have you looked at that?
(Mr Berryman) You certainly could do that if you came fairly close to 
Oxford Street. I do not think you could do it at Cavendish Square, you 
would be too far back. The answer is no. Our Bill is about promoting the 
railway. Any commercial opportunities which arise incidentally to that can 
be considered but we are specifically precluded from promoting matters 
relating to commercial development, as I think you know. 
6795. I see. Mr Berryman, the evidence to this Committee is that no 
commercial opportunities are being considered as part of the funding of 
the railway?
(Mr Berryman) No, that is not what I said. I said we are only allowed to 
consider taking powers for building the railway. If there are commercial 
opportunities as a result of taking those powers, of course they will be 
considered, but that is different from what you just said. 
6796. Of course, commercial opportunities again are reflected in the 
extent to which a scheme is commercially attractive and capable of 
funding; agreed?
(Mr Berryman) They are but they are a very minor consideration. 
6797. I will move to one other matter and that is operational issues. You 
were talking to the Committee about concerns about platform waiting and 
the potential for overcrowding. My understanding, and indeed it remained 
unchallenged when Mr Schabas raised it, is that only one in six trains is 
going to go to Heathrow. Is that right?
(Mr Berryman) Only one in six trains is going to go to Heathrow, that is 
correct, yes.
6798. So as five trains go by there will be a growing number of people on 
the platform waiting to go to Heathrow, will there not, by way of example?
(Mr Berryman) There may be and that is probably not a very desirable 
feature of our scheme, but ten of those 24 trains will be going to Ealing 
Broadway and other intermediate stations on the way, so most of the 
passengers for that branch will be able to get on the first train that 
comes along. 
6799. If so directed?
(Mr Berryman) Yes, if so directed, but the majority of them will not be 
going to Heathrow. Perhaps it is worth just pointing out that the actual 
passenger numbers going to Heathrow will be relatively low for a railway 
of this type. The demand at Heathrow is really not enough to fill 
Crossrail trains on anything more than four trains an hour. 
6800. Again, that is further work you have undertaken, is it?
(Mr Berryman) It is indeed. We have done a very considerable amount of 
work on this. 
6801. So in terms of the modelling exercise, in terms of passenger origin 
and destination there is survey material, is there, that is available to 
be inspected?
(Mr Berryman) There is a huge amount of back-up material to this 
Environmental Statement which I think is available in the form of CDs and 
the like. 
6802. So amongst that will be of course such matters as construction 
disruption as well, would there?
(Mr Berryman) Yes, indeed. 
6803. I see and that is all available, is it?
(Mr Berryman) That is all available, yes.
6804. And where does one find it, Mr Berryman?
(Mr Berryman) I cannot tell you off the top of my head. I was not 
expecting to give evidence this afternoon. 
6805. Well, you have that pleasure. 
(Mr Berryman) But we will certainly write to you and tell you where it is. 

6806. MR PUGH-SMITH: That will be very helpful to know because again, as I 
say, the Environmental Assessment does lead one up a few cul-de-sacs in 
that regard. Thank you very much.

Examined by THE COMMITTEE
6807. CHAIRMAN: Mr Berryman, can I bring you back to the Environmental 
Statement and what you said in relation to the alignment proposed by the 
previous witness, the loop line from Bond Street up to King's 
Cross-Euston-St Pancras. You said that would alleviate the Victoria Line. 
I am not sure because, as you know, the Euston-St Pancras-King's Cross 
loop has the Piccadilly, the District, the Circle and the Victoria Line, 
and it strikes me that the outer alignment would distribute more people on 
to those already overcrowded lines significantly? 
(Mr Berryman) Yes without doing a proper analysis, it is hard to say, but 
it kind of follows the desire of some people to go down towards that part 
of the West End. I would expect it to be a second order effect and not to 
be hugely significant. 
6808. The reason I am asking that is because one of the arguments that has 
been put is that people would use predominantly Crossrail trying to get 
into this inner circle of Bond Street or through to the City itself. It 
would strike me that if Crossrail went on that loop it would become a 
distribution point on those lines which are already there in existence and 
that would be considerable. 
(Mr Berryman) Yes. 
6809. One other thing, you did say that, all told, you had examined a 
couple of dozen different alignments. 
(Mr Berryman) Mainly in outer parts of London. 
6810. Could we get some sort of list of the ones that have been carried 
out, either briefly or in depth? 
(Mr Berryman) Yes. 
6811. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. 
6812. MR BINLEY: I have six questions and I apologise for that again but 
you will know that the third reading has not taken place and we have got a 
lot of work to do collectively as Members of Parliament. My first question 
is with regard to pressure on a specific route. It was told to us that on 
16/02/02 that Mr Schabas was told "they do not want any delays because of 
Government pressure". Thereafter, it was told to us that Mr Montague said 
in October 2004, "I really have no locus to consider alternatives". My 
concern about all of this is that here we are with a massive scheme, one 
of the biggest Parliament has ever dealt with, which will create immense 
disruption over a long period of time. My concern is that there was a 
route which had to have quite a bit of work done on it and that there was 
pressure to stay with that route because that would be more cost effective 
at this time. Am I right in thinking that or can you tell me why that is 
not the case?
(Mr Berryman) I have never picked that up. When we did the east/west study 
we looked at three really fundamental alternatives and each of those 
alternatives had a sub-variant. The three that we looked at were something 
along the present line that we have got, something along the 1980s 
preserved line; something which went into the centre of London and then 
turned south west and went down towards Clapham Junction and that area; 
and something which went from Clapham Junction up to the north east, up to 
Hackney and that way, and a combination of the two, so any permutation of 
two out of four branches. 
6813. My question was about pressure. If we have got two statements, one 
in 2001 and one in 2004, which suggest first of all that there was 
Government pressure and secondly that there was no alternative to the 
line, how do you interpret that if you do not interpret it as pressure?
(Mr Berryman) Going into Adrian Montague's review, as I understand it, and 
I think I can understand it correctly, his brief was to see if the scheme 
that we brought forward was viable. He was specifically not there to 
examine alternatives, he was just looking at is it worth Government 
proceeding to the next stage. The earlier one, I am not quite sure where 
that came from in because I know Mr Schabas' evidence but I cannot 
remember the context. 
6814. My question is a rather subjective question, I recognise that, and I 
understand why you would not have the information. My second question is 
with regard to the cost of alternatives in that you made a specific 
statement to Mr Schabas in your letter of 30 September 2002: "On this 
basis we have arrived at a projected cost of £18 billion or approximately 
three times the cost." I reckon that takes into account all of the 
additions that Mr Schabas said. Thereafter, you recently said that the 
difference in the central part of Crossrail is not very great and, in 
fact, the scheme Mr Schabas has put forward today on behalf of the Mayfair 
residents might be cheaper. 
(Mr Berryman) Indeed, particularly if you miss the station out. 
6815. Can you tell me then why when he asked for a breakdown of estimates 
and so forth in your letter of 16 October 2002 you really did not give a 
very fulsome answer to costs of alternatives, did you? You did not even 
suggest that papers were available that he could look at, or whatever? 
(Mr Berryman) That is correct. 
6816. If I got that answer as a politician I would be a bit suspicious. 
Why did you not give him more information than you gave in this rather 
evasive answer dated 16 October 2002?
(Mr Berryman) Mr Schabas is rather a persistent correspondent, as I think 
you have probably guessed. 
6817. Is there anything wrong with that? 
(Mr Berryman) Rightly or wrongly, I was just trying to close the 
discussion down. 
6818. Would it not have been easier to close it down by saying "Here are 
the figures"? 
(Mr Berryman) It would not have closed it down; he would have come back 
and argued. 
6819. My third question is the evidence relating to catchment and the fare 
box income and that is specifically relating to the situation of Liverpool 
Street because you state in one of your letters - and I hope I can find it 
very quickly but I think I am right and you did talk about this - I wanted 
to know how much you were referring to Liverpool Street when you answered 
this letter on 13/09/02 because I got the impression that when we were 
arguing that there would be more pressure on Liverpool Street your 
arguments were couched in the vein that there would not be that much more 
pressure on Liverpool Street. 
(Mr Berryman) Can you refresh my memory on what I said? 
6820. "It does not relieve the most grossly overcrowded sections of the 
rail network which are on the LUL lines." You further added to my thoughts 
that you were talking about Liverpool Street when you talked specifically 
about that section between Liverpool Street and a bit further out to the 
east. 
(Mr Berryman) Stratford?
6821. Yes. I am getting two impressions.
(Mr Berryman) There are two separate issues. They are related but they are 
separate. One is the crowdedness of the trains and one is the number of 
people emerging from the station. Much of the overcrowding on those trains 
is caused by people who are going beyond Liverpool Street, they do not all 
get off at Liverpool Street by any stretch of the imagination. I am sure 
Members of the Committee will be familiar with the Victoria Line which 
passes through Warren Street. The Victoria Line going through Warren 
Street is a very, very heavily trafficked railway but Warren Street 
station itself, the Victoria Line part of it, is used very little. I am 
not suggesting that Liverpool Street is the same as Warren Street, I am 
just pointing out that the fact that a train is overcrowded does not 
necessarily mean the people emerging from that particular station will be 
that many.
6822. I am not sure I understood that but never mind. I have just two very 
quick questions. The first question is has your costing taken into account 
on the main route the cost of compensation?
(Mr Berryman) Yes.
6823. Did it take into account an estimation of disruption costs during 
the length of construction of Crossrail?
(Mr Berryman) In what kind of ----
6824. If I run a business near to Crossrail and my business is going to be 
adversely affected, as no doubt it will in one way or another, by what is 
going to be sizeable disruption, would that have been taken into account?
(Mr Berryman) I cannot answer that generally, it would be on a 
case-by-case basis.
6825. Forgive me, I asked a specific question. Was that costing taken into 
account in the costs you projected for the cost of Crossrail, because it 
is a cost, is it not?
(Mr Berryman) It is a cost.
6826. It is a direct cost.
(Mr Berryman) I would have to get Mr Smith to give evidence on that point.
6827. I am happy with a letter from you.
(Mr Berryman) We will look at that. I genuinely do not know the answer to 
that question.
6828. SIR PETER SOULSBY: Mr Berryman, can I go back over one of the 
questions asked earlier on. Is it the case that in the summary, and 
perhaps in the full environmental appraisal, the only alternatives to the 
central section you discussed were those shown to us in the extract of the 
plan that we saw earlier on identified by the names of those who proposed 
the alternatives?
(Mr Berryman) Yes, those were the ones that we looked at in detail.
6829. So the only two that were discussed were the ones described as put 
forward by the Residents' Association of Mayfair and Super Crossrail?
(Mr Berryman) Yes.
6830. Those were the only ones that were described in the environmental 
appraisal?
(Mr Berryman) It is worth bearing in mind that those two organisations 
were not linked at that time, they were completely separate proposals 
which came in from the two parties.
6831. It is fair to say that you were reacting to proposals put forward by 
third parties?
(Mr Berryman) Yes, that would be fair comment. As I said, in the initial 
study we did look at a number of alternatives.
6832. When you came to the environmental appraisal, the alternatives that 
you discussed, whether in detail or in outline, were those that were being 
put forward by third parties who responded then?
(Mr Berryman) That is correct.
6833. Can I just clarify from you just how much of the detail of that 
assessment was put in the public domain?
(Mr Berryman) Very little. It was shared with the people who proposed it 
and, as Mr Schabas has told you, we employed him for a time to work with 
us on developing his proposal. Certainly the other proposal was shared 
with the Residents' Association of Mayfair, but they were not put into the 
public domain in the sense that anybody could get hold of them.
6834. So it is fair to say in both the summary and the detail of the 
environmental appraisal the assessment, the detailed assessment, would not 
have been put into the public domain?
(Mr Berryman) Certainly the detailed design work we had done was not. I 
would have to check what detail went into the back-up documents for the 
Environmental Statement. I suspect the answer to your question is no, it 
was not, but I would need to check.

Re-examined by MS LIEVEN
6835. MS LIEVEN: Just on Sir Peter's question first. Can you look - I will 
hand you my copy - at volume five of the Environmental Statement, table 
1.1. We will put it up on the screen. If we look at paragraph two, table 
1.1 is setting out the contents of an Environmental Statement as required 
by the EIA regulations. The first column on the left is the legal 
requirement: "The legal requirement in terms of alternatives as set out at 
paragraph two is an outline of the main alternatives studied by the 
applicant or appellant and an indication of the main reasons for this 
choice taking into account the environmental effect" and then there is a 
summary in the right-hand column of what we have done. In the ES first: in 
terms of what was done in the ES do you consider that it meets the legal 
requirement to provide an outline of the main alternative study?
(Mr Berryman) Yes, it certainly provides an outline of the main 
alternative study.
6836. So far as further information in the public domain is concerned, we 
heard reference from Mr Schabas to a report on Super Crossrail and 
Superlink which was produced, I believe, by CLRL in May 2005, is that 
correct?
(Mr Berryman) That is correct, yes.
6837. I think that is the report? (Same indicated)
(Mr Berryman) That is the one, yes.
6838. It obviously postdates the ES, there is no doubt about that, but is 
that document in the public domain?
(Mr Berryman) My recollection is that it is posted on our website and if 
it is not it is certainly posted on Mr Schabas' website.
6839. Just one other question in response to a question asked by Mr 
Binley. That was about the suggestion made by Mr Schabas that there was 
political pressure, although it was not clear placed upon whom, to 
maintain the original safeguarded route and not go elsewhere. My notes of 
Mr Schabas' evidence give a reference to a meeting of 17 January, although 
I have not managed to note the year, in which you were reported as saying 
that you were not looking into alternative routes because political 
pressure had been placed and there was no time. To what degree are you 
conscious, on your own primary evidence, of political pressure to pursue a 
particular route?
(Mr Berryman) I have never been under any political pressure to pursue any 
route, this one or any other route. There has occasionally been concern 
about time but never any particular route specified. As far as the people 
employing me are concerned, they have been most supportive of the approach 
we have taken. When we have suggested looking at alternatives, and I am 
talking mainly about the outer area, we have never had anybody saying, 
"You cannot do that, there is not enough time".
6840. MS LIEVEN: Thank you very much, Mr Berryman.
6841. CHAIRMAN: Just one question before you go, Mr Berryman. You 
mentioned that you had had some liaison on the river route with the 
Environment Agency.
(Mr Berryman) That is right.
6842. I presume also the Port of London Authority because it has 
responsibility in part for that route.
(Mr Berryman) Yes, that is why I said one of my colleagues who dealt with 
that is not here today so I could not ask him but it was the relevant 
authorities.
6843. I do know on most of that the Environment Agency has full 
environmental rights, but there is the other authority. I wonder if you 
could write us a note on their objections to the river route.
(Mr Berryman) Yes, certainly. I can tell you briefly about that. They were 
suggesting that it would increase the risk of flooding upstream and that 
was the issue they were very concerned about.

[SUMMARY STATEMENTS]
6844. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. Mr Pugh-Smith, how long do you think 
you will need for summary?
6845. MR PUGH-SMITH: I will be under five minutes, sir. I have a 
logistical problem: I have to be in Cardiff later on this evening and if 
it is possible to get completed by five o'clock or thereabouts I would be 
very grateful.
6846. CHAIRMAN: That is entirely in your hands!
6847. MR PUGH-SMITH: I appreciate that and I will be very brief.
6848. CHAIRMAN: Ms Lieven?
6849. MS LIEVEN: I will do my best, sir, two minutes.
6850. CHAIRMAN: We have the most important people in the building here, 
the stenographers, and we have only got agreement until five.
6851. MS LIEVEN: I appreciate that, sir. I will keep it extremely brief. 
As I understand it there are three principal issues raised by the 
Residents' Association: failure to consider alternative alignments; the 
EIA requirements; and compensation.
6852. So far as the issue of alternative alignments is concerned, you have 
just heard the evidence of Mr Berryman. It is important to focus on the 
legal requirement, which is not to set out in the ES every alternative but 
to deal with an outline of the main alternatives. That is done in the 
Environmental Statement.
6853. So far as our consideration of alternatives is concerned, we have 
over the past years considered alternatives in very considerable detail 
and at the end of the day it comes down to a professional appraisal that 
the alternative schemes do not provide sufficient additional benefits, and 
in most cases provide no additional benefit and, indeed, additional 
disbenefit. In particular, they do not believe the overcrowding on the 
Central Line, they produced other problems on other lines, and in terms of 
the river route they produced significant construction problems as well. 
You have heard Mr Berryman's evidence on it and we also dealt with it 
briefly in opening at Day 1, paragraphs 58-60. Sir, can I suggest that we 
have this report which deals with the alternatives in much more detail 
copied and circulated to the Committee so that if Members do have any 
concerns about more detailed points they can look at the report.
6854. So far as the EIA requirements are concerned, we dealt with that in 
opening at Day 1, paragraph 137. The ES at volume one, chapter six, pages 
112-127 does meet the legal requirements to consider the main alternatives 
in outline. Importantly, as Mr Elvin made clear in opening, the fact that 
an ES does not provide the level of detail on a particular point that a 
particular objector wants does not make it an invalid ES. We say we have 
entirely met the legal requirements.
6855. Finally, sir, on compensation, the evidence that Mr Winborne gave, 
as Mr Winborne very freely accepted in evidence-in-chief, comes back to an 
attack on the National Compensation Code. We call it a code but, of 
course, it is made up of different legislative pieces, we all know that by 
now, but Mr Winborne quite freely accepts what he is seeking is a change 
in the national law at this point and, as we have said again and again in 
our submission, it is not appropriate for this Committee to do that, it 
would be quite wrong to change the law in relation to those affected by 
Crossrail and not those affected by other schemes elsewhere. It is right 
that compensation should be provided consistently across the United 
Kingdom in accordance with the will of Parliament. Can I just refer you to 
Mr Elvin's closing on Smithfield Traders at Day 14, paragraphs 4041-4049 
where we dealt with that comprehensively. 
6856. CHAIRMAN: I think that is a fair summary but may I remind you also 
the Committee has the right to look at all evidence that is presented 
before it and to have a view. Whether or not it is a direction is another 
matter, but we can certainly give a view.
6857. MS LIEVEN: So far as compensation is concerned, it has been raised 
by a lot of Petitioners and I suspect it will be one of those points that 
we will come back to briefly in our final closing at the end of this 
process, whenever that should be, so we can pull together all the points 
that have been made. I do not want to keep repeating the same point every 
couple of days, it is going to get tedious.
6858. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Ms Lieven. Mr Pugh-Smith?
6859. MR PUGH-SMITH: Thank you very much. Chairman, as I explained when I 
opened the case on behalf of the Residents' Society on 30 March, the issue 
that was in front of you was an issue of alternatives and so I raise the 
same point in closing and put matters in their appropriate context 
starting with the requirements of the environmental assessment directive 
and the EIA regulations for England. Parliament is the decision-maker. You 
can form a view as to whether or not alternatives have been adequately 
considered. We point to the fact that the consideration of the 
Environmental Statement is sketchy, to put it at its most benign, and 
inadequate substantively, to put it at its most precise. The very 
information you were told blandly by Mr Berryman this afternoon which 
could be available is not available, or if it is available it is hidden 
away in such a form that it is not readily accessed. You were promised a 
document that was a response to the Superlink proposal and in fact we have 
provided it for you already, it is exhibit 15 in your bundle, the 25 pages 
that Mr Schabas said did not actually provide substantive answers to the 
points that he had raised.
6860. Members, I have to put it to you that really what you are being 
faced with today is a stark reality: of a scheme that has not been 
adequately considered. There are questions as to the legality of the 
Environmental Statement. I simply raise this because they are capable of 
cure. As Mr Elvin pointed out on Day One, there have already been two 
supplementary addenda to the Environmental Statement and all my clients 
seek today is for you to suggest to the Promoters, in somewhat more 
forceful terms than we can, that they look at these alternatives properly 
before this Bill is allowed to proceed further - certainly before it comes 
to the third reading, if necessary (in response to Mr Binley's point).
6861. The reason why we raise the question of compensation is it is not 
just how the system is going to operate, it is its impact upon those 
residents and businesses which are going to be affected day-on-day for the 
future life of this railway. If the compensation bill can be less, as Mr 
Winbourne has indicated, simply by appropriate measures being taken, why 
not take them? Why not study them now? Why leave this all till later to 
find there are disadvantaged people not having sufficient money even 
though the compensation code is being applied which may be one that is 
nationally based but, nonetheless, is one which has been recognised by the 
Law Commission as being in such need of reform that it has produced two 
volumes of very detailed work which will await Parliamentary time for 
consideration in terms of the substantive Bill.
6862. Members, that is the position in which my clients wish to place this 
matter in this context at this time. We ask you to recommend to the 
Promoters that there be further consideration of the alternatives so that 
Parliament as well as the nation have the reassurance that what finally 
gets passed as an Act of Parliament, if it ever does, is not only in the 
national interest but is the best value to this country, not only in terms 
of utilisation of taxpayers' money but, also, in terms of having the least 
environmental effects. Thank you very much.
6863. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much indeed. Tomorrow morning, at 10.00 am 
in this room, we will recommence firstly to hear the Petitions of the 
Regent Street Association, followed then by the London Borough of Havering 
and we will then return, at 2.30 tomorrow afternoon, to hear the case put 
by Antique Hypermarket Limited and then return, if necessary, to the 
London Borough of Havering case.